THE WONDERS OF VEGETATION. 205 



once suspected that this must be the plant I was look- 

 ing for. Having carefully uprooted it, I carried it 

 full of joy to a native woman whom I had employed 

 in searching for it elsewhere. She recognized it at 

 once as one of the simple remedies made use of in the 

 country, and explained to me on the spot its nature. 

 When I told her of the use made of this plant in Chi- 

 na, this woman cured herself on the following day of 

 an intermittent fever that had plagued her for several 

 months. The preparation was simply a drink of the 

 cold water, in which a few roots of the plant had been 

 steeped after having been previously bruised between 

 two stones. She resorted twice again to this remedy 

 for the same complaint, and on each occasion she was 

 cured within twenty-four hours. 



" My surprise was great when, upon hearing that 

 the Chinese name meant Likeness to Man, or, as the 

 translator of Father Kircher's work states it men's 

 legs, I found that the Iroquois word garentoguen had 

 the same meaning ! It signifies the two thighed, and 

 is by the Indians applied to the ginseng, the plant 

 which I had discovered in Canada and then again 

 known in China. Reflecting on the uncommonness 

 of the name, which seemed to rest entirely on the 

 very imperfect ^likeness to the human body borne 

 only occasionally by a few plants of this family while 

 it is met with in other plants of quite different spe- 

 cies, I could not convince myself that the same word 

 should have been applied to the same thing in China 

 and in Canada without some interchange of ideas 

 and without direct communication. Thus I was con- 



