China ginger is not imported in a dried state, the rhizomes being too tender and succulent to thoroly dry for export. It is preserved or candied. For preserving, the rhizomes are first scalded, then washed in cold water and peeled, then boiled in pans for 2 or 3 hours; then transferred to copper pans and boiled for 2 hours in a mixture of sugar and water--just sufficient water to cover the roots, 5 lbs. of sugar to 10 lbs. of ginger, the roots having been pierced with a sharp instrument to enable the sugar to soak into them. After boiling the ginger is put into large jars and stands for several days, when it is again boiled in sugar and water in the same quantities. After it has become cold it is packed in jars or tins for export. To crystallize, the same process is gone thru, only in the final boiling it is boiled until the sugar become dry. The Chinese season for preserving ginger is from July to October. It is nearly all prepared in Canton and Hongkong. A kind known as Ng Mai Keunig is preserved in Swaton, from Alpina galanga, but it is not like the Canton or Hankou ginger and is only made for native consumption, to be used medicinally or for cooking. Some of it goes to the Straits Settlement, but none to Hongkong. Jamaica preserved ginger is mostly put up in glass bottles. The uses of ginger are too well known to need repeating. MUSTARD Well Known to the Ancients, but More in a Medicinal Way--How Cultivated and Prepared for Commercial Uses Mustard was well known to the ancients, but more in a medicinal way than dietetic. From an edict of Diocletian, 30 A. D., in which it is mentioned along with alimentary substances, we must suppose it was then regarded as a condiment, at least in the eastern parts of the Roman empire. In Europe, during the middle ages, mustard was a valued accompaniment to food, especially with the salted meats which constituted a large portion of the diet of our ancestors during the winter. In the Welsh “Meddygon Myddrai” of the 13th century, a paragraph is devoted to the “Virtues of Mustard.” In household accounts of the 13th and 14th centuries, mustard is of constant occurrence; it was then cultivated in England, but not extensively. The price of the seed between 1285 and 1340 varied from 1s 3d to 6s 8d per quarter (21 lbs.), but between 1347 and 1376 it was as high as 15s and 16s. In the accounts of the Abbey of St. Germain des Pres in Paris, 800 A. D., mustard is specially mentioned as a regular part of the revenue of the convent lands. The essential oil of mustard was first noticed in 1660 by Nicolas le Febre and more distinctly in 1732 by Boerharroe.