305 
factory (in the suburbs of Canton) I found the following scarce 
grasses . . . Andropogon Schoenanthus,” and later on in his 
Flora Sinensis (vol. ii. p. 3€4) “ Andropogon 1. Schoenanthus.” 
This by itself is conclusive evidence for the assumption that the 
specimen named “ Schoenanthus” in Linnaeus’s herbarium is 
Osbeck’s, and therefore of Chinese, not Indian, origin. More- 
over, Mr. B. D. Jackson pointed out to me that a specimen named 
“A. Schoenanthus”’ appears already in a manuscript catalogue of 
Linnaeus’s herbarium drawn up about 1754. This date includes 
Osbeck’s collection whilst it excludes all contributions of Indian 
plants, which Linnaeus may have received, with the exception of 
the small set which Olaf Toren sent him from the west coast of 
the peninsula in 1751. Linnaeus may, of course, have had 
Osbeck’s specimen in his mind, when adding “ India,” using that 
term in a very vague way as often was the case in those times. 
But, however that may be, the determination of Osbeck’s specimen 
as A. Schoenanthus and its presence under that name in the 
Linnaean herbarium only proves that Linnaeus also made mis- 
takes. The supposition that the sheet written up by Linnaeus as 
“ Schoenanthus”” was really intended to serve as the “type” of 
his A. Schoenanthus is in the circumstances untenable, and it 
is therefore only reasonable that the name Schoenanthus be 
restored to the species which for 2,000 years had been known 
by it. 
HISTORY OF “HERBA SCHOENANTHI.”—When in 1881 Emil 
Brugsch Bey discovered the tomb of Deir-el-Bahari in the 
necropolis of Thebes, the secret vault which contained the coffins 
of so many illustrious kings also yielded a remarkable profusion 
of botanical treasures : funeral wreaths which the kings of the 
20th or 21st Dynasty (between 1,200 and 1,000 B.c.) had de- 
posited on the sarcophagi of their predecessors, offerings of fruits, 
lichens, bundles of a grass (Desmostachya bipinnata) and quanti- 
ties of the straw of another grass which Professor Schweinfurth* 
recognised as “ Gymnanthelia lanigera”’ (a rarely used synonym 
of C. Schoenanthus). Some of the inflorescences were still in 
exceJlent condition. Even “ the odour of the grass was preserved 
to a certain extent in the mixture of the offering.” So early 
begins the history of the grass. Then the grass was found under 
similiar conditions in the tombs of the cemetery of Hawarajf in 
the Fayum, again associated with Desmostachya bipinnata. Accord- 
ing to Professor Flinders Petrie some of the tombs were probablyt 
of the 20th, 26th and 30th Dynasties, but most were Ptolemaic. 
According to Loret§ the grass is also frequently mentioned in 
hieroglyphic perfumery receipts as ‘ Aethiopian cane,’ ‘rush of 
the Sudan,’ and ‘ Cyperus of the West.’ Whether all of these names 
actually refer to C. Schoenanthus or not, the finds of Deir-el- 
Bahari and Hawara afford in any case indisputable proof of the 
high place which was assigned to the grass 3,000 years ago. 
To-day OC. Schoenanthus does not grow in the neighbourhood of 
old Thebes or in the Fayum ; it has in fact, with one exception, 
* Schweinfurth in Nature, vol. xxviii. (1883), p. 113. 
+ Newberry in Flinders Petrie, Hawara, Biahmu and Arsinoe (1889), p. 53. 
+ Flinders Petrie, l.c., p. 
§ Loret, Flore Pharaonique, (1887), p. 11. 
