180 Dr. R. Wight on the Laurus Cassia of Linnaeus. 



aromatic and spicy like cinnamon, are bitter and have in a 

 shght degree the taste and odour of myrrh. This assertion, 

 wide as it may appear of the truth, is yet founded in fact, and 

 what may appear still more extraordinary, has led to a disco- 

 very, which, without such aid as he has given, would not pro- 

 bably have soon been made by a professed botanist, a title to 

 which I believe Mr. Marshall does not aspire. He appears 

 to have been led to the discovery, that the Laurus Cassia of 

 Linnaeus did not produce aromatic bark, simply through the 

 native name, and wonders how it could have received from 

 him the name of Cassia, and had qualities attributed to its 

 bark which it does not in the slightest degree possess. I think 

 I can now^ answer the question, and explain the mystery which 

 has so long hung over this species, and been hitherto ren- 

 dered only more obscure by each attempt to bring it to light. 

 It is well known to modern botanists, that many of their 

 earlier predecessors were but indifferent describers of plants, 

 and often very loose in their quotations of figures as syno- 

 nyms, a sin of which Linnaeus was often about as guilty as 

 any of his cotemporaries. He seemed to have had an idea, 

 that their figures were generally at best but approximations 

 to the truth, and that if a figure exhibited even a remote simi- 

 larity to a plant before him, especially if from the same coun- 

 try, he might with safety quote it as a synonym. Bearing this 

 in mind, we can easily account for a number of errors to which 

 his incorrect synonyms have given rise. The present instance 

 affords an excellent example of what 1 have here stated, and 

 one which, but for the discovery of Mr. Marshall, might have 

 long remained undetected. 



In Herman's herbarium of Ceylon plants, he (Linnaeus) 

 found one bearing the native names of " Dawalkurundu, Ni- 

 kadawala,^^ under which it is referred to, or described in Her- 

 man's ^ Musaeum Zeylanicum ' This he considered a species 

 o^ Laurus, apparently from habit alone, and in his usual brief 

 precise style, calls it, "Laurus foliis lanceolatis trinerviis, 

 nervis supra basin unitis f having previously called the true 

 cinnamon, " Laurus foliis ovato-oblongis trinerviis basi nervos 

 unientibus." The difference between the two, as indicated by 

 the names, seems very slight, merely depending on the one 



