Statistics of Cinnamon Cultivation. 375 



attention to the supply of various species of cinnamon-bear- 

 ing laurels and cassias, growing in Cochin-China and Java. 



When Government, recovering at last from its delusion 

 of treating cinnamons, which at first had seemed indigenous 

 to the island of Ceylon alone on the earth,* as a national 

 monopoly, reduced the export duty to one shilling, and 

 ultimately repealed it altogether, the various substitutes had 

 already found their level in Europe, as affording a larger 

 supply at a much more moderate rate, and the cultivation of 

 the finer kinds became less and less each year. Prices fell, 

 and the consumption w^as diminished. Only the coarser 

 sorts repaid exportation. Nay, it even led to the interesting 

 and curious result, that just as, previous to the high price 

 under monopoly, the low-priced cassia displaced the finer sort 

 of genuine cinnamon, at the present day the coarser sorts of 

 cinnamon are beginning to oust the cassia from the English 

 market, whence all the world are supplied. At present there 

 are from 14,000 to 15,000 acres planted with cinnamon, 

 chiefly in private hands, and producing annually from 

 800,000 to 900,000 lbs. of cinnamon, worth from £40,000 

 to £50,000 sterling. 



* Sir Emerson Terment, in his work (vol. i. p. 599), challenges the assertion that 

 Ceylon is the native coimtry of the cinnamon-tree. In no European or Asiatic 

 clu'onicles is any mention made of cinnamon as a product or article of commerce in 

 Ceylon up to the end of the thirteenth century. Altliough it was from the earUest 

 times unported into Eiu'ope from Africa tlu-ough Arabia, the natives trading wth 

 Ceylon first knew of the existence on the island of this important shrub about the 

 twelfth or thirteenth century. Hence Sir Emerson looks upon Africa as the nati\'e 

 country of the cinnamon-tree. 



