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Species. With the discovery of more powerful or more pleasant 
aromata these oil-grasses gradually lost their importance or even 
fell out of use. But in our own day the highly perfected art of per- 
fumery has seized on them again, has revived the taste for their 
odours and created that demand for their oils which has found its 
response inthe development of a regular oil-grass industry in Ceylon, 
India, and to a less degree in the Malay Peninsula and in Java. 
Out of the 12 grasses treated here, only four are worked commer- 
cially; but there is no doubt that others are to be found, 
particularly among theif African congeners, which might be 
equally serviceable and probably place new essential oils at the 
disposal of the manufacturers of perfumes and perfumed articles. 
The genera to which those 12 species belong are Cymbopogon 
with 10, and Vetiveria and Andropogon with one species each. 
The following paragraphs contain an account of their history, 
botanical as well as economical. 
1. Cymbopogon Schoenanthus, Spreng. 
(Andropogon Schoenanthus, Linn., not of most authors.) 
Camel-Hay—Izkhir (Arab.)—Khavi (Hind.). 
“ HERBA SCHOENANTHI,” THE FOUNDATION OF THE SPECIES.— 
Andropogon Schoenanthus was established by Linnaeus in the 
first edition of his Species Plantarum, p. 1046, in 1753. As is so 
frequently the case, his diagnosis is utterly insufficient for identi- 
fication. It consists of the specific phrase of the Lagurus, No. 465, 
of his Flora Zeylanica (1747). On the other hand, his references 
leave no doubt whatever that he meant the “ Herba Schoenanthi” 
of the earlier herbalists and the pharmacopoeias of his time. He, 
moreover, states this expressly in his Materia, Medica (1749), p. 31, 
where he also indicates Arabia as the native country of the species. 
In his Species Plantarum, it is true, he added “ India ” to the dis- 
tribution area of Andropogon Schoenanthus. He cannot have 
known of the extension of this species into North-Western India ; 
the reason for the addition must therefore be sought somewhere 
else. As this addition has led almost from the very beginning to 
great confusion, it appears necessary to examine the circumstances 
that may have guided Linnaeus. Was it the inclusion of the Ceylon 
Lagurus into the synonymy of the species, or did he possess 
specimens from India which he thought were identical with the 
Arabian “ Herba Schoenanthi,” the foundation of his species ? 
I take the case of the Flora Zeylanica first. There the passage 
concerned, and referred to above, is made up of diagnostic phrases 
of the “Herba MSchoenanthi,” of a citation from Burmann’s 
‘Thesaurus Zeylanicus,’ p. 107, and of another from Hermann’s 
‘Museum Zeylanicum,’ p. 66. Burmann himself, l.c., quotes 
Plukenet, Alm. p.175,t. 190,f.1,and Hermann. Neither Plukenet’s 
text and figure, nor the original which is still preserved in his 
herbarium at the British Museum leave us in doubt as to his 
having the officinal “ Herba Schoenanthi” in view. Concerning 
Hermann, however, this is what he says: “ Kalandurw: Gramen 
Dactylon Zeylanicum radice tuberosa, aromatica, dulci, odorata.” 
Kalandura is a name still in use in Ceylon, and applied to 
