24 Dr Wight on the Laurm Cassia of Linmeus. 



perpetuo-florens, &c., and assigned the native name of Dawal- 

 kurundu, not as it appears from the specimen itself having 

 been so named, but because being different from the true cin- 

 namon of which he had seen such specimens and figures, he 

 thought it an inferior wild or jungle sort, what must of neces- 

 sity, be the plant which Herman had described in his Musaeum 

 Zeylanicum, though the inflorescence differed much from the 

 description (a very essential point, which Burman remarked and 

 endeavours to explain away), and therefore gave it the same 

 Cingalese name. Linnaeus's specimen not being in flower, and 

 the resemblance between the specimen and figure being in 

 other respects considerable, he had not the means of detecting 

 the discrepancy, and unsuspectingly adopted Burraan's figure 

 and name as a synonym to his plant. In Rheede's Hortus 

 Malabaricus (ii. tab. 57), he found the figure of another cin- 

 namon, even more closely resembling his plant in its gene- 

 ral aspect than Burman's figure : this he also associated as a 

 synonym, and Rheede's plant being lauded on accoimt of the 

 aromatic properties of its bai'k and leaves, which resemble 

 the true cinnamon, though it is not the genuine cinnamon 

 tree, he seems to have considered himself quite safe in asso- 

 ciating this also, and called the three species, this tria juncta 

 in uno planta, Laurus Cassia, and assigned it as the source of 

 the oflicinal " Cassia Lignea cortex.'' 



After this exposition of the origin of the species Laurus 

 Cassia, it can scarcely be a matter of surprise that no two bo- 

 tanists have ever agreed as to the plant which ought to bear 

 the name, nor that not one of them should ever have surmised 

 what plant Linnaeus had constituted the type of his species. 

 It is not my intention, on the present occasion, to extend 

 these remarks, by tracing the various conjectures that have 

 been promulgated on the subject ; suflice it to say, that no 

 one, so far as I am aware, has taken a similar view as that 

 now explained. Tt only further remains for me to give some 

 account of the three species thus erroneously associated. 



The first mentioned, Dawalkurundu, Linnaeus's own plant, 

 and the type of the species, is, I believe, the Laurus involu- 

 r.rata of Vahl, and of Lamarck in the Encyclopedic Methodique, 

 and has in Professor Nees' Monograph of the Indian Laurinse 

 (Wall. Plant. As. rariores) received the name oi' TctratJenia 



