CHAP. 
2 SPICES 
American tropics gave us only vanilla, capsicums, and 
pimento. 
The colder climates of northern Europe and Asia 
produced but few — coriander, cumin, caraway seed, and 
mustard and calamus root. 
Of the East Asiatic tropical spices most are not 
really known in the wild state, and it is in many cases 
actually doubtful as to where was their place of origin. 
The appreciation of spices as flavouring for the 
simple rice food of the oriental, extending over unknown 
ages, has perhaps caused the oriental to cultivate forms 
of the aromatic trees and shrubs they met with in the 
forests into the forms we now know them in, but it 
must be admitted that in most cases the well-known 
nutmegs, cloves, ginger, and others do not bear any 
close resemblance botanically to anything we have since 
met with in the forests. The cause of this disappear- 
ance of the original plant may be perhaps due to the 
removal to or enclosure in gardens of the plant when 
found in a wild state. In the case of trees of which 
the fruit is valuable, the native, on finding it in the 
forest, may form a garden round them, or he may 
transfer all the seedlings he can find to his garden, or 
by steadily collecting the crop of seed annually, may 
practically in time exterminate the plant in the forest, 
while later selections of the most productive and 
valuable forms may modify the fruit so much that we 
can hardly now recognise it. 
Spices can be arranged according to the parts of the 
plant which form the commercial product. Thus in 
cloves it is the flower bud which is used ; in nutmegs, 
vanilla, capsicums, pepper, it is the fruit ; ginger and 
turmeric the underground stems, cinnamon and cassia 
the bark. This is perhaps the most convenient way of 
sorting them, and I have adopted it. 
Cultivations in general can be classified into groups 
in the following way : — 
1. Plantation cultivations, which are generally 
effected on a large scale, and belong to the class of 
