CAJEPUT, 349 
CHAPTER XVI. 
CAJEPUT.—LAVENDER.—ROSEMARY. 
CaAJEPUT. 
O1t of Cajeput is distilled from the leaves of several species of 
Melaleuca, myrtaceous shrubs or trees abundant in the Indian 
Archipelago, the Malay peninsula, Northern Australia, Queens- 
land, and New South Wales. The bulk of the oil commercially 
dealt in is shivped from Batavia and Singapore and yielded by the 
Melaleuca minor, Smith *, and was designated by Rumphius, who 
passed fifty years in the Dutch East-Indian possessions, as Arbor 
alba minor, to distinguish it from other closely allied trees which 
are also called in the East Indies Kaya-pootie (white wood) +. 
Its other native names are Dawn-Kilsjil and Caju-Kilan. It is 
described by Roxburgh { under the name Melaleuca Cajuputi. 
Melaleuca minor forms a tolerably erect tree, but crooked and 
slender ; the bark is very light or whitish ash colour and smooth, 
the exterior bark peeling off from time to time in thin flakes like 
that of the birch-tree, and the interior part separable into numerous 
lamine like the leaves of a book. The branches are scattered, with 
the slender twigs often drooping as completely as in the willow, 
round and smooth and, when young, silky. The leaves are alternate, 
projecting in every direction, but most frequently vertical, short- 
stalked, narrow-lanceolate ; while young, silky, when full grown, 
smooth, deep green, from 3 to 5 inches long and from half to 
three-quarters of an inch broad ; very aromatic when bruised. The 
white globular flowers are borne on terminal spikes; while in 
* Rees’ Cyclo. xxiii. p. 2; DeC. Prodr. iii. p. 212; Mueller in Benth. Flora 
Australiensis, 11. p. 142; Bentley & Trimen, Med. Plants, t. 108. 
+ Rumph. Amb. ii. p. 72, t. 16. 
¢ Flor. Ind, iii. p. 594. 
