HENNAH. ol3 
There are writers who frivolously waste time by worrying 
themselves and the world with their ideas about the identity of 
the “Sweet Cane” of Scripture; some fancying it to be one 
plant, some another; they refer back to Dioscorides, even to 
Jeremiah. The Ancients mixed up many plants under one 
poetical name and led us Moderns into much useless confusion 
and dispute (instance Spikenard); their writings, in languages 
not over rich in botanical terms, are misty, abrupt in expression, 
and have been mauled in translation and re-translation. Whether 
the ‘‘Sweet Cane”? was the Fwnum Camelorum or not, now 
matters little. 
HenNNAnH. 
This plant has been cultivated for ages in India, Egypt, North 
Africa, Syria, and the Levant. In the “Song of Solomon,” 
written about 1000 B.c., it is referred to under the Hebrew word 
Copher and has been wrongly translated into English as Camphire, 
a word which was used in old English to signify Camphor (the 
product of an entirely different tree). Hennah is the “‘ Cyprus of 
Egypt” referred to by Pliny. It appears to be a native of Arabia 
and to have been distributed by the Arabs into Turkey (Asiatic 
and European), Egypt, and along the coast of the Mediterranean. 
Its modern Arabic name is Thamar-ul-hinné’i (the hinna shrub), 
the leaves are also called hinna. Dr. Dymock states the verna- 
cular name in Bengalee to be Mehedi, in the Bombay and Hindee 
dialects Mehndee, and in Tamil, Marutouri and Aivanam. Arabic 
and Persian works give Arkan and Fakuliytn as the Greek names. 
The plant is figured in Van Rheede’s ‘Hortus Malabaricus,’ i. 
tab. 40, under the name of Mail-anschi. Botanically it is known 
as the Lawsonia inermis (Linnzeus). According to Dr. Roxburgh 
(Flora Indica, ii. p. 446) it is called in the Telinga dialect Gounta, 
and it is indigenous on the Coast of Coromandel, where he 
found it in the state of a large shrub, though “it is naturally a 
small ramous tree. It flowers and seeds most part cf the year. 
The flowers are small, greenish yellow, and remarkably fragrant 
whether fresh or dry, being particularly grateful at a distance. 
It is much used for hedges, growing readily from cuttings. Fertile 
seeds are not often met with. He considers the species called 
spinosa to be nothing more than the same plant growing on a 
dry sterile soil; it is then very thorny, the branchlets being thin, 
