160 MEDICINAL PLANTS. 



are twenty-one, linear, parallel, distinct, single-valved, and fixed 

 longitudinally to the nectary : the germen is ovate, placed above the 

 insertion of the corolla, and supports a cylindrical style, furnished 

 with two obtuse rough convex stigmata: the fruit is an oblong 

 berry, containing four kidney-shaped seeds of unequal size *. 



It appears a little surprising, that the canella, which is a native of 

 the West Indies, and of which figures have been given by Plukenet, 

 Sloane, Catesby, Browne, and others, should have been generaHy 

 confounded with the tree which produces the cortex winteranus : 

 even the younger Linnaeus, who describes this tree under the genus 

 Winterania, from a specimen in the herbarium of Montin, has ac- 

 knowledged that he could not discover how far it differed from the 

 Drimys. or Wintera of Murray. 



The well known specimen f which was given by Dr. Swartz, 

 to the Linnaeaii Society, accompanied with a botanical history 

 of the tree, must, we should think, remove every doubt con. 

 cerning the true characters of canella alba ; and by comparing 

 Woodvillc's plate with that published of the wintera aromatica, in the 

 fifth volume of Medical Observations and Inquiries by Drs. Fother- 

 gill and Solander, it may be observed how far the tree, which pro- 

 duces the cortex winteranus, differs from that of our plant, the bark 

 of which is the officinal canella alba. The latter appears from 

 Clusius to have been first introduced into Britain about the year 

 1600; the former was known in England twenty years before, and 

 took its name from William Winter, captain of one of the ships 

 which accompanied Sir Francis Drake to the Straits of Magellan, 

 from whence he brought this bark to Europe in 1579. John Bau- 

 hin appears to be the first who confounded the names of these barks, 

 by styling the cortex winteranus, Canella alba ; and as Sir Hans 



* " The whole tree (according to Dr. Swariz) is very aromatic, and when in 

 blossom perfumes the whole neighbourhood. The flowers dried, and softened 

 again in warm water, have a fragrant odour, nearly approaching to that of 

 musk. The leaves have a strong smell of laurel. The berries, after having 

 been some time green, turn blue, and become at last of a black glossy colour, 

 and have a faint aromatic taste and smell. They are, when ripe, as well as the 

 fruit of several kinds of laurel, very agreeable to the white-bellied and bald- 

 pate pigeons, (Golumha Jamaicensis fy lexicocephala), which feeding greedily 

 upon them, acquire that peculiar flavour so much admired in the places where 

 -they are found. 



+ See Woodville, vol. ii, p. 319. 



