part 8

(1876).

The starch, which bears the same name as the plant, is a dull white powder, having a peculiar satiny or lustrous aspect, by reason of the extraordinary magnitude of the starch granules of which it is composed. These granules examined under the microscope are seen to be flattened and of irregular form, as circular, oval, oblong, or oval-truncate. The centre of the numerous concentric rings with which each granule is marked, is usually at one end rather than in the centre of a granule. The hilum is inconspicuous. The granules though far larger than those of the potato, are of the same density as the smaller forms of that starch, and, like them, float perfectly on chloroform. When heated, they begin to burst at 72° C. Dilute hydrochloric acid acts upon them as it does on arrowroot.

Canna starch boiled with 20 times its weight of water affords a jelly less clear and more tenacious than that of arrowroot, yet applicable to exactly the same purposes. The starch is but little known and not much esteemed in Europe; it was exported in 1876 from St. Kitts to the amount of 51,873 lb, besides 5,300 lb arrowroot starch.[2346]

_Curcuma Starch, Tikor_—The pendulous, colourless tubers of some species of _Curcuma_, but especially of _C. angustifolia_ Roxb. and _C. leucorrhiza_ Roxb., have long been utilized in Southern India for the preparation of a sort of arrowroot, known by the Hindustani name of _Tikor_, or _Tikhur_, and sometimes called by Europeans _East Indian Arrowroot_.[2347] The granules of this substance much resemble those of _Maranta_, but they are neither spherical nor egg-shaped. On the contrary, they are rather to be described as flat discs, 5 to 7 mkm. thick, of elliptic or ovoid outline, sometimes truncate; many attain a length of 60 to 70 mkm. They are always beautifully stratified both on the face and on the edge. The hilum is generally situated at the narrower end. We have observed that when heated in water, the tumefaction of the grains commences at 72° C.

Curcuma starch, which in its general properties agrees with common arrowroot, is rather extensively manufactured in Travancore, Cochin and Canara on the south-western coast of India, but in a very rude manner. Drury[2348] states that it is a favourite article of diet among the natives, and that it is exported from Travancore and Madras; we can add that it is not known as a special kind in the English market, and that the article we have seen offered in the London drug sales as _East Indian Arrowroot_ was the starch of _Maranta_.

[2346] Page 102 of the Reports quoted at p. 633, note 2.

[2347] Living roots of the plant used for making this arrowroot at Cochin, have been kindly forwarded to us by A. F. Sealy, Esq. of that place.

[2348] _Useful Plants of India_, ed. 2. 1873. 168.

ZINGIBERACEÆ.

RHIZOMA ZINGIBERIS.

_Radix Zingiberis_; _Ginger_; F. _Gingembre_; G. _Ingwer_.

=Botanical Origin=—_Zingiber officinale_ Roscoe (_Amomum Zingiber_ L.), a reed-like plant, with annual leafy stems, 3 to 4 feet high, and flowers in cone-shaped spikes borne on other stems thrown up from the rhizome. It is a native of Asia, in the warmer countries of which it is universally cultivated,[2349] but not known in a wild state. It has been introduced into most tropical countries, and is now found in the West Indies, South America, Tropical Western Africa, and Queensland in Australia.

=History=—Ginger is known in India under the old name of _Sringavera_, derived possibly from the Greek Ζιγγίβερι. As a spice it was used among the Greeks and Romans, who appear to have received it by way of the Red Sea, inasmuch as they considered it to be a production of Southern Arabia.

In the list of imports from the Red Sea into Alexandria, which in the second century of our era were there liable to the Roman fiscal duty (_vectigal_), _Zingiber_ occurs among other Indian spices.[2350] During the middle ages it is frequently mentioned in similar lists, and evidently constituted an important item in the commercial relations between Europe and the East. Ginger thus appears in the tariff of duties levied at Acre in Palestine about A.D. 1173;[2351] in that of Barcelona[2352] in 1221; Marseilles[2353] in 1228; and Paris[2354] in 1296. The _Tarif des Péages_, or customs tariff, of the Counts of Provence in the middle of the 13th century, provides for the levying of duty at the towns of Aix, Digne, Valensole, Tarascon, Avignon, Orgon, Arles, &c., on various commodities imported from the East. These included spices, as pepper, _ginger_, cloves, zedoary, galangal, cubebs, saffron, canella, cumin, anise; dye-stuffs, such as lac, indigo, Brazil wood, and especially alum from Castilia and Volcano; and groceries, as racalicia (liquorice), sugar and dates.[2355]

In England ginger must have been tolerably well known even prior to the Norman Conquest, for it is frequently named in the Anglo-Saxon leech-books of the 11th century, as well as in the Welsh “Physicians of Myddvai” (see Appendix). During the 13th and 14th centuries it was, next to pepper, the commonest of spices, costing on an average nearly 1_s._ 7_d._ per lb., or about the price of a sheep.[2356]

[2349] The mode of cultivation is described by Buchanan, _Journey from Madras through Mysore, etc._ ii. (1807) 469.—Fig. of the plant in Bentley and Trimen’s _Medic. Plants_,