327 
50 years later Herbert de Jager made on De Bondt's unfounded 
identification, leave no doubt that the <:rass W as the Sereh of the 
Malays. De Jager's criticism was contained in a letter to Rum- 
phius, dated Batavia, 6th July, 1683,* where De Bondt's grass is 
referred to as 'Sire' or "Gramen Melissae Odore" the earliest 
passage I can find for the use of the word " Sire " (now usually 
spelt "Sereh"), which was even then widely used throughout 
where he resided from 1653 onwards, and in the neighbouring 
islands. He drew attention to it in a short note published in 1684,t 
but probably written earlier under the influence of De Jager's letter 
quoted above. In this note he speaks of the grass as * Schoen- 
uitthun; AmJboiriicwm? and gives in an accompanying plate an 
excellent figure of the 'root' as he calls it, that is' the heads of 
the branches of the rhizome with the base of the leaf-tuft spring- 
ing from them, evidently just in the condition ready for use. 
Comparing it with the Arabian ' Schoenanthum^ he remarks : 
" Schoenanthi nostratis Amboinici radices ab Arabico nonnihil 
discrepant. Nostrum sterile est : Arabicum floret. Radices hae 
odoratae sunt et acres." Then there followed, written before 
1695, in the fifth volume of his Herbarium Amboinense, that long 
chapter^ on 'Schoenanthum Amboinicum, Siree,' which from 
Linnaeus onward has been often quoted, but, I am afraid, 
rarely read with the attention it deserves. It is, like almost 
all that Rumphius has written, pervaded by that charm of direct- 
ness and lucidity with which the phenomena of nature reflect 
themselves only to the clear and open mind of a great and un- 
biassed observer and sincere lover of nature such as Rumphius 
was. It is no exaggeration to say that there is, in his account of 
the Sereh, more information concerning the general features and 
the biology of the grass than in any other publication dealing 
with it. The chapter is accompanied by a figure, v Inch represents 
a plant evidently taken from a garden, one-fourth natural size, 
and as faithful as can be. The fragment of an inflorescence 
which is ad ctory, unless it was drawn— as is 
almost certain — from a diseased or anomalous panicle. I quote 
the essential part of 1.' tig from the 
Dutch text .— 
" The Siree of Amboina is no doubt a Schoenanthum. From 
the Arabian Schoenanthum it differs in that it emits fewer stems 
and is sterile, or at least produces flowers only very rarely ; nor is 
J t so aromatic. It forms a dense bush of so many leaves that 
they hide the stem, the root and the ground immediately around 
" The leaves are very long, narrow and thin, like those of a 
sedge, 3-3i feet Ion*, scarcely as wide as a linger, the-' 
^•iigthwiseli-oui:!, to rotieli.sniii, what enrtin- ifsu-okt-d backwards, 
, Dec. ii., Anno i 
