196 ODOROGRAPHIA. 
that containing cassia immediately takes a blackish-blue coloration. 
The cheap sorts of cassia known as Cassia vera can be distinguished 
from China cassia and from cinnamon by their richness in 
mucilage. This can be extracted by cold water as a thick glairy 
liquid, which, on the addition of corrosive sublimate or neutral 
acetate of lead (but not of alcohol), yields a dense, viscous pre- 
cipitate. 
When the Ceylon cinnamon trees become too old to produce 
good growth they are cut down, and the bark of the larger branches 
and of the trunk removed. This cinnamon is called Mate. The 
odour and taste are agreeable, but feeble, and poor in essential oil. 
An oil is also derived from the root; this is lighter than water and. 
smells of cinnamon and camphor mixed. 
Although the finest bark is derived from the cultivated trees, all 
forms of the tree yield a more or less odorous bark. The finest 
of the uncultivated trees are distinguished by the large size of 
their leaves, but yet the quality of the bark cannot always be 
judged by this sign, so the bark-gatherers remove a piece of the 
odourless, hazel-looking exterior bark, and taste the inner bark 
before commencing operations ; leaving those trees which are not 
of the quality sought. Some varieties, such as the C. multiflorum 
and C. ovalifolium, yield barks of such inferior quality that they 
are rarely gathered except to adulterate a finer description. 
Of Indian cinnamons there are the Tellicherry or Bombay cin- 
namon; in appearance it is equal to the Ceylon kind, but the 
internal surface of the bark is more fibrous and the flavour inferior, 
but it is superior to the Malabar variety which is grown on the 
Coromandel coast. This Madras or Malabar cinnamon approx- 
imates to Cassia lignea in thickness, but it is not the old Malabar 
cinnamon, which was the product of the Laurus Cassia, Linn., and 
which was destroyed by the Dutch. It is the Ceylon cinnamon 
propagated in India by the English, and has nearly all the characters 
and quality of the Ceylon; it is, however, distinguished by being 
paler in colour and having a more feeble and less permanent 
odour. It is made up in sticks as long as the Ceylon growth, but 
the pieces of bark are in reality shorter and the length of the 
sticks is due to the method of telescoping the strips of bark one 
in the other. The layers of bark forming the sticks are not so 
thin as those produced in Ceylon, and the sticks are thicker and 
more cylindrical. 
