334 
ORIGIN OF THE LEMON-GRASS.—As the lemon-grass is only 
known in the cultivated state, the question arises, what is its 
origin? I am afraid it is yet too soon to give a satisfactory 
answer. It is true there is not, among the Malayan species of 
Cymbopogon, so far as I know them from the collections at Kew 
and the British Museum, a single one which suggests itself to my 
mind as the spontaneous state of the lemon-grass, and Rumphius’ 
statement that it occurs in the wild state in Amboina is,as Ihave . 
already remarked, open to doubt; but our knowledge of the © 
Cymbopogons of the Malayan region is still so imperfect that the 
possibility of the lemon-grass having originated there is by no 
means excluded. 
The Cymbopogon most closely approaching C. citratus that I 
have seen is Cymbopogon pendulus, Stapf (Andropogon pendulus, 
Nees ex Steud.), collected by Wallich in Nepal, by Hooker, Kurz 
and Clarke in the Sikkim Terai, and by Griffith (No. 6763) in 
“ Bengala.”” No vernacular name is given, there is no informa- 
tion concerning its properties and uses, nor has it ever been 
connected with the lemon-grass, and to do this in the light of our 
present knowledge of the history of the latter, would involve a 
hypothesis bolder than I dare to advance. Another allied form, 
presumably from the same region, but less like lemon-grass and 
distinguished therefrom by less hairy racemes, borne on long 
common peduncles, which are frequently exserted from the 
supporting sheath, and by smaller and relatively much broader 
spikelets, was figured as ‘ Andropogon MSchoenanthus’ (qua 
‘lemon-grass’) by Wallich, and referred to Andropogon Nardus, 
var. exsertus by Hooker. It was in cultivation in the Calcutta 
Botanic Garden, and may have been raised from the seeds of 
a fairly distinct Andropogon of the Nardus-series which extends 
from the Saharanpur Terai to the Garo Hills, and possesses very 
aromatic, citron-scented leaves. However this may be, neither 
Wallich’s plant nor its presumably wild representative agrees 
sufficiently with the lemon-grass to suggest the derivation of the 
latter from either of these species. 
OIL AND PLANTATIONS.—I have to add only a few words on 
the oil prepared from lemon-grass. We have seen that some kind 
of distillate was prepared from it in the Philippines as early as the 
beginning of the 17th century. In Europe it first became known 
about 1717, when Lochner* mentions: ‘ Oleum Siree’ as one of the 
most remarkable oils of the Hast Indies: “supereminet hoc inter 
reliqua ex orientali India allata”; but there is nothing to show 
that it was regularly imported into Hurope as an article of com- 
merce until the last quarter of thenineteenth century. Watttin 1883 
gives the export of lemon-oil from Ceylon where the lemon-grass 
is cultivated by the side of the Citronella grass, although to a very 
much smaller extent, as 1,500 lbs. Gildemeister and Hoffmann 
(1903){ estimate the production of lemon-oil in the Straits Settle- 
ments at 2,000-3,000 lbs. Lemon-grass oil in small quantities 
and for experimental purposes has also been produced in Java, 
Tonkin, West Africa, Brazil and the West Indies. It has 
* Lochner in Ephem. Acad. Nat. Cur. Cent. v.--vi. (1717), Append., Pe? _ 157. 
+ Dict. Econ. Prod. India, vol. i., part iv. (1883), p. 5. 
{ Gildemeister and Hoffmann, Vol. Oils (1903), p. 289. 
