343 
specimen to which I have referred above. That type is an exact 
counterpart of certain specimens in the herbarium of Ch. Du Bois, 
who had received them from Madras, partly from his brother 
Daniel and partly from Dr. Bulkley, the latter having put them 
down as ‘Caumachipille pille, i.e, ‘Kamatcti pillu.’ Petiver 
also enumerated the same grass, aS a specimen in the Du Bois 
Herbarium proves, as “ Schoenanthus Madraspatanus panicula 
minore, spicis villosis geminis” in his ‘ Museum,’ No. 576 (1695), 
and communicated a sample of it to Scheuchzer, who in his 
- Acrostographia,’ p. 98 (1719), gave a more detailed account of it 
under Petiver’s phrase. 
CONFUSION WITH ‘ANDROPOGON SCHOENANTHUS, L.’— 
Petiver, in his commentary on Samuel Browne’s plants, made the 
mistake of identifying the Kamatei pillu with the ‘ Schoenanthum’ 
of the herbalists, and even upbraided Plukenet for figuring 
“this plant twice over . . ._ his first figure is much truer than 
the last,” although it is quite clear that the ‘ first figure’ (Almag. 
tab. 119, fig. 2) represents the Kamatci pillu, whilst the other 
(1. c. tab. 190, fig. 1) illustrates, though badly, the ‘ Schoenanthum.’ 
I mention this ‘mainly to show that, even in pre-Linnean times, the 
tendency had manifested itself of identifying other aromatic grasses 
with the one which had become so familiar to the botanists of those 
early days. We have seen that Linnaeus fell into the same error, 
and we need not be surprised that when, towards the end of the 
18th century, Koenig and his pupils Rottler and Klein gathered 
the grass again, they too put it down as ‘Andropogon Schoen- 
anthus. Rottler and Klein supplied Willdenow with specimens 
of this grass, and Willdenow appears to have written out his 
extended description of ‘ Andropogon Schoenanthus,* partly at 
least, from these specimens. 'Toshow how confused the taxonomy 
of these grasses had by this time become, I may mention that there 
are three sheets in his herbarium under the name. Sheet 1 contains 
a panicle and leaves of the true ‘ Lemon-grass’ or Sereh, a young 
panicle with some of the upper leaves of the officinal ‘ Schoen- 
anthum’ (Camel’s hay) and a small inflorescence of C. coloratus. 
Sheets 2 and 3 are the Kamatci grass. Sheet 1 is initialled by 
Willdenow, and Sheet 3 is accompanied by a label with the 
name ‘ Andropogon Schoenanthus’ in his handwriting. Under 
the circumstances it is not surprising that the Indian botanists of 
the time, who depended on a few books and relied for the com- 
parison of their species with those of extra-Indian floras on the 
support of their European colleagues, formed equally confused 
ideas concerning these fragrant grasses. Thus Ainslie, in his 
‘Materia Medica ’t (1813), refers ‘Comachee pilloo’ to ‘ Andro- 
pogon Schoenanthus, and adds to it as synonyms vernaculars 
which in reality belong to the ‘ Lemon-grass ’ and to the ‘ Camel’s 
hay.’ Wight, who collected the grass repeatedly, distributed some 
of his specimens (No. 1806) under the same name. Others he 
submitted to Nees, who was then planning a monograph of the 
Indian Glumaceae, which, however, was never completed. Nees 
named Wight’s grasses, which were subsequently distributed with 
his determinations, and described them as opportunity offered. 
* Willdenow, Spec. Plant. vol. a , part ii, (1806), p. 915. 
T Ainslie, Mat, Med. (1813), p. 75, 
