taste
nauseous and disagreeable, not the least resembling that of the
Malabar cardamoms. It is propagated by cuttings of the rhizoma. The
plants yield in three years, and afterwards give an annual crop. They
are not used here, but sent to the continent.

4. _Alpinia Cardamomum_.--This is the source of the clustered
cardamoms, and furnishes the best known sort. Its produce is in great
request throughout India, fetching as much as L30 the candy of 600
Lbs. About 192 candies are grown annually in Travancore, and the usual
crop in Malabar is reckoned at 100 candies annually. It flourishes on
the mountainous parts of the Malabar coast, and among the western
mountains of Wynaad. The bulbous plants, which grow three or four feet
high, are produced in the recesses of the mountains by felling trees,
and afterwards burning them, for wherever the ashes fall in the
openings or fissures of the rocks, the plant naturally springs up. In
the third year the plants come to perfection, bearing abundantly for a
year or two, and then die. In Soonda Balagat, and other places where
cardamoms are planted, they are much inferior to those grown in the
wild state. It may be propagated by cuttings or divisions of the
roots. Not more than one-hundredth part of the cardamoms raised in
Malabar are used in the country. They are sent in large quantities to
the ports on the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf, up the Indus to
Scinde, to Bengal and Bombay. The price of Malabar cardamons at
Madras, in June, 1853, was about L3 the maund of 25 lbs. They fetch in
the Bombay market L4 10s. the maund of 40 lbs. Cardamoms form a
universal ingredient in curries, pillaus, &c. The seed capsules are
gathered as they ripen, and when dried in the sun are fit for sale.
They should be chosen full, plump, and difficult to be broken; of a
bright yellow color, and piercing smell; with an acrid bitterish,
though not very unpleasant taste, and particular care should be taken
that they are properly dried.

_5. Amomum Grana-Paradisi_, which is indigenous to the islands of
Madagascar and Ceylon, yields an inferior sort of cardamoms, known by
the names of grains of paradise, or Meleguetta pepper. These are worth
in the English market only from 1s. 2d. to 1s. 4d. per pound, while
the long and Malabar cardamoms fetch 2s. 8d. to 3s. 3d. the pound.
This plant is a native of Guinea, and the western parts of Africa
about Sierra Leone. We imported from thence in 1841, 7,911 pounds.

Th