342 
is replaced by aclosely allied form with more slender and more 
branched culms, usually from 2-1 m. high, with narrower, thinner, 
often almost flaccid and very glaucous leaves and with generally 
smaller panicles, which seem to retain their glaucous colour, or 
merely turn strawcolour when mature. The structure of the 
spikelets is, however, that of C. Martini, and so closely does the 
Carnatic grass in some instances approach the narrow-leafed state 
of C. Martini, that there would be no difficulty in constructing a 
chain of intermediate stages, linking together both forms as 
completely as possible. Those transition forms are, however, so 
far as I can see, confined to the border districts where the two 
grasses meet, elsewhere they are sufficiently distinct. 
HARLY HISTORY.—The oldest specimens of the Carnatic grass 
on record are a specimen in the Plukenet herbarium at the 
British Museum and several in the Du Bois herbarium at Oxford, 
all of them collected near Madras at the end of the 17th or in the 
early years of the 18th century ; but it is very probable that a 
passage in a letter by Herbert de Jager* to Rumphius, dated 
6th July, 1683, also refers to it. Contesting the view of Bontius 
and others that the ‘Sereh’ of the Malays is identical with 
the ‘Schoenanthum’ of the herbalists and in support of his 
argument, he says: “I have become familiar with the true and 
genuine Schoenanthum in Persia, and particularly on the coast of 
Coromandel, where I have traversed whole fields of that grass, 
which is about 24 to 3 feet high and the scent of which may be 
noticed from afar, particularly during the night when dew falls 
or in day-time when it rains, whilst in sunshine and fine weather 
not much odour is perceptible. In Golconda this Schoenanthum 
ground into powder is used for washing the hands on account 
of the sweet scent it imparts to the water; though the odour 
does not persist when the hands get dry.” Neglecting for the 
present the question as to what the ‘ Schoenanthum’ powder of 
Golconda was, there can be little doubt that the fragrant Coromandel 
grass, of which there were whole fields to traverse, was the 
Kamatti-pillu of the Tamils. Of this name we hear for the first 
time in ‘Samuel Browne’s Seventh Book of East Indian Plants,’ 
edited and commented on by Petivert (1762). The plants which 
form the subject of the paper were collected “ between the 15th 
and 20th June, A.D. 1696, in the ways between Fort St. George 
and Trippetee, which is about 70 miles off.” One of them was 
‘Comachee pillee,’ and of it Browne says: ‘This is Schoenanth, 
which the natives here have not in great Esteem ; sometimes in the 
Moors’ Camps, the Horses, Camels, and Oxen which carry burthens 
eat nothing else ; it is generally 2 or 3 feet high here about (but 
near Color in reech soyl, I have seen it 8 feet high) [this gigantic 
grass is no doubt C. Martini] and thick as a Quill or small Reed ; 
It’s sometimes by the natives put into their Decoctions for Fevers, 
and with us is deservedly of more esteem.” Petivert identified 
the ‘Comachee pillee’ with Plukenet’s ‘Gramen Dactylon 
Maderaspatense’ figured on plate 119, fig. 2 of his Almagesta 
(1691), the type of which is in Plukenet’s herbarium—it is the 
* Herbert de Jager in Valentini, Hist. Simpl. (1732), p. 392. 
+ In Petiver, Mr. Samuel Browne, his Seventh Book of Hast India Plants in 
Phil. Trans. xxiii. (1702), p. 1252. 
+t Petiver, Lc., p. 1251, 
