I examined my patients twice a week, and the closest rhinoscopical exploration would not reveal the slightest pathological change in the mucous membrane of the nares.
Now, what is the etiological factor of the disease? Is it a specific germ conveyed by the air to the parts and—locus minoris resistencia—deposited at the pretended area, or is the germinal matter present in the nasal mucous membrane with certain persons, and requires only at a certain time and under certain conditions physiological stimulation to manifest periodical pathological changes, which give rise to the train of symptoms called hay fever? Dropping all hypothetical reasoning, I think some outside vegetable germ is causing the disease in those predisposed, and peroxide of hydrogen acts on them as it does on the pus corpuscles, i.e., drives them out when and wherever it finds them. I hope the profession will give this new measure a thorough trial and report their results.—Therapeutic Gazette.
THE SOURCE OF CHINESE GINGER.
In the Kew Bulletin for January an interesting account is given of the identification of the plant yielding the rhizome employed to make the well-known Chinese preserved ginger. As long ago as 1878 Dr. E. Percival Wright, of Trinity College, Dublin, called the attention of Mr. Thiselton Dyer to the fact that the preserved ginger has very much larger rhizomes than Zingiber officinale, and that it was quite improbable that it was the product of that plant. The difficulty in identifying the plant arose from the fact that, like many others cultivated for the root or tuber, it rarely flowers. The first flowering plant was sent to Kew from Jamaica by Mr. Harris, the superintendent of the Hope Garden there. During the past year the plant has flowered both at Dominica in the West Indies and in the Botanic Garden at Hong-Kong. Mr. C. Ford, the director of the Botanic Garden at Hong-Kong, has identified the plant as Alpinia Galanga, the source of the greater or Java galangal root of commerce. Mr. Watson, of Kew, appears to have been the first to suggest that the Chinese ginger plant is probably a species of Alpinia, and possibly identical with the Siam ginger plant, which was described by Sir J. Hooker in the Botanical Magazine (tab. 6,946) in 1887 as a new species under the name of Alpinia zingiberina. Mr. J.G. Baker, in working up the Scitamineæ for the "Flora of British India," arrived at the conclusion that it is not distinct from the Alpinia Galanga, Willd. The Siam and Chinese gingers are therefore identical, and both are the produce of Alpinia Galanga, Willd.
FLOATING ELEVATOR AND SPOIL DISTRIBUTOR.
We illustrate a floating elevator and spoil distributor constructed by Mr. A.F. Smulders, Utrecht, Holland, for removing dredged material out of barges at the Baltic Sea Canal Works. We give a perspective view showing the apparatus at work, and on a page plate are given plans, longitudinal and cross sections, with details which are from Engineering. The dredged material is raised out of the launches or barges by means of a double ranged bucket chain to a height of 10.5 meters (34 ft. 5 in.) above the water line, from whence it is pushed to the place of deposition by a heavy stream of water supplied by centrifugal pumps.