148 THE GINSENG OF COMMERCE. 



musk so strong, that few strangers can eat them without violent sickness 

 following. 



Mr. Wallace, in describing an alligator hunt on the lakes of Mexiana, an 

 island lying off the mouth of the Amazon, states that about eighty were 

 killed in two days. In some of these lakes a hundred have often been 

 killed in a few days by a party of negroes ; in the Amazon or Para river, 

 it would be difficult to kill as many in a year. They are cut open, and the 

 fat which accumulates in . considerable quantities about the intestines is 

 removed and made up into packets in the skius of the smaller ones, taken 

 off for the purpose. The fat is boiled down into oil, and burned in lamps. 

 It has rather a disagreeable smell, but not worse than train oil. 



These various materials render that animal much more valuable than it 

 was supposed to be in the days of Romeo, when " starved apothecaries, to 

 show that learning and not beef was their aliment, hung up in their 

 ' meagre repertories' alligators stuffed." 



The musk glands of the crocodile (according to Dr. Riippell) form a 

 great part of the profit which results from its capture, as the Berberines 

 will give as much as two dollars for them, the unguent being used as a per- 

 fume for the hair. The hawskbill and loggerhead turtles exhale a musky 

 odour. They feed upon Crustacea and various mollusca, and particularly 

 upon cuttle fish. 



In Western Australia musk is obtained by the natives from the musk 

 duck (Biziura lobata), which cannot fly. Colonially, it is called the steamer, 

 from its paddling motion, and the noise it makes as it shuffles along the 

 water with its diminutive wings or flappers. 



THE GINSENG OF COMMERCE. 



In the Chinese pharmacopoeia the root styled ginseng {Panax quin- 

 qnefolium) stands pre-eminent, and, where money is of secondary considera- 

 tion, no medicine is manufactured without its entering into the component 

 parts. Its very name implies the wonderful powers ascribed, to it, signify- 

 ing the " medicine of immortality." Formerly none but the wealthy used 

 it, as it was at all times worth more than three times its weight in silver, 

 and frequently its weight in gold. Volumes have been written upon it by 

 the most distinguished Chinese savans, and the great aim of their physicians 

 is to produce that compound of ginseng with otber productions which shall 

 insure mortality to man. 



The plant is small, growing a foot or two in height, and is an herbaceous 

 perennial. In the close of the eighteenth century it was found growing wild 

 on the Rocky and Alleghany Mountains, and is thence collected and also 

 cultivated in many of the United States, and there is a steady export 

 of the prepared root to China. It is now obtained largely in the Northern, 

 Middle, and Western States of the Union, particularly Virginia, Kentucky, 

 Ohio, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota. 



