VETIVER. 309 
natives the correct vernacular names of plants, and even greater 
difficulty in expressing by any combination of the Roman 
characters, or by accentuation, the guttural pronunciation, 
peculiar aspiration, etc., of Arabic, Sanscrit, Malay, or of the 
lauguages and dialects of the East—possibly they might be more 
easily rendered in German than in English, as the German 
language has sounds more approximate thereto. 
A museum specimen of essential oil should be distilled by the 
exhibitor himself, as all Oriental oils are adulterated ; it should be 
accompanied by a dried specimen of the plant taken when in 
flower, a sample of the root, and a drawing of the living plant, 
also a description of the aspect of the place where found and its 
exact local name written in Oriental character, then—in London, 
we know it. However, to summarize on the evidence at present 
available, the four commercial oils derived from the four plants 
are Ginger-grass, Citronella, Lemon-grass, and Vetiver. The 
three first are already described. 
Vetiver or Cus-Cus.—This is the root of the Andropogon muri- 
catus, Retz., syn. A. sguarrosus, Linn., Vetiveria odorata, Virey, 
Anatherum muricatum, Retz., Raphis muricatus, Nees, Phalaris 
zizanoides, Linn, ‘There is a verse in the Sanskrit language 
composed of nine words arranged in two lines purporting to be 
the* nine names.under which the plant was known; doubtless they 
were poetical names, as they are not to be found in the extensive 
list of local names recently enumerated by Watts t. The roots 
are universally known in Bengal as Chas or Khas-Khas, and in 
Bombay Khasa-Khasa. It is a perennial tufted grass, very con- 
spicuous, tall, and erect. It is very common on every part of the 
coast of Coromandel, Mysore, also in Bengal and Burma, where 
it meets with a low, moist, rich soil, especially on the banks of 
water-courses. It covers large tracts of waste land in Cuttack. 
It inhabits the plains of the Punjab and North-west Provinces, 
and ascends into Kumaon 1000 or 2000 feet in altitude {. It is 
also found in Réunion, Mauritius and the Plilippine Islands. With 
the exception of lemon-grass it is the only species of the grasses 
under discussion occurring in the New World, being abundant in 
* Asiatic Researches,’ iv. p. 306. 
+ Dict. Economic products of India, 1889. 
{ Duthie’s ‘ Grasses of the North-west Provinces,’ 1883, 
