GAL AN GAL. 89 



The propagation and cultivation of most of the species of 

 Curcuma is very simple : — The ground must be rich, friable and in 

 a high situation so as not to be swamped during the rainy season. 

 It may be planted on land occupied the previous year by sugar 

 cane, and is deemed a meliorating crop. The soil, after being well 

 ploughed and cleared of weeds, is raised, in April or May, according 

 as the rain begins to fall, into ridges nine or ten inches high and 

 twenty broad, with intervening trenches nine or ten inches broad. 

 The sets, or small portions of new root, are planted on the tops of 

 the ridges at the distance of two feet apart. 



Galangal. 



The plant producing the " Chinese Galangal " root, called also 

 the " Lesser Galangal " was identified in 1870 as the Alpinia 

 officinarum, Hance. A description of the plant was communicated 

 to the Linnean Society of London, made from specimens collected 

 near Hoihow in the north of Hainan.* 



The word Galcuiga appears to be derived from the Arabic 

 Khulanjan which, in its turn, was derived from the Chinese 

 Kau-liang Kiang, signifying, according to Porter Smith, Kau-liang 

 ginger ; Kau-liang is the ancient name of a district in the province 

 of Kwancptung. The Persian name is Khusrodara, 



In the fifteenth century, galangal was evidently in common use ; 

 for Saladinus, physician to one of the Princes of Tarentum, circa 

 A.D. 1442-1458, reckons it amono: the thinsjs necessctria ct icsitata, 

 which should be found in the shop of every aromatarius.^ 



Very elaborate historical notes on this drug are furnished by 

 Daniel Hanbury in the Pharmaceutical Journal, [3] ii., 248. 



The flowering stem is from 2 to 4 feet high, erect, covered by 

 the leaf-sheaths. The leaves are numerous, alternate, distichous, 

 with long, smooth sheaths terminating above in an erect, sub-acute, 

 scarious ligule, an inch or more in length and decurrent at the 

 base along the margin of the sheath ; the blade is 9 to 14 inches 

 long, narrowly lanceolate, narrowed at the base but not stalked, 



* Jonrn. Lin. Soc. Botany, 1873, xiii. jo. 6 ; and Bentley and Trimen Med. 

 plants, t. 271. 



f " Compendium Aromatariorum,"' Bonn. 1488, fol. 



