Commercial and scientific notes on essential oils. 23 



cassia is mentioned in the earliest Chinese herbal, said to have been written in 2700 B.C. 

 The mention of "Tien-chu kwei", that is Indian cassia, in the Pen-tsao, written in the 

 eighth century may refer to bark produced in Malabar. The mention of two spices or 

 perfumes, cinnamon and cassia, in the older books of the Old Testament and in the 

 earliest Greek works on medicine, as nearly allied but of different value, may have 

 only referred to two qualities of what we should now call cassia, this latter name 

 — originally u casia" — being related to the Hebrew "ketzioth". meaning "stripped off". 

 The barks were originally brought to Europe — that is to the Levant — by Phoenicians, 

 who obtained them from the Arabs, and the ancient notion that they were derived 

 from a "regio cinnamomifera" in Somaliland may have been merely an error arising 

 from this trade passing through several hands or part of the common characteristic 

 system of trade mystification. The full Arabic name "Kirfat-et-darsini", bark of the 

 Chinese tree, shortened into ''Kir/ah", persists as "Kalfah", the existing Bombay name 

 for Malabar cassia. As Sir Emerson Tennent pointed out, there is no mention of 

 cinnamon as a product of Ceylon prior to the Arab writer Kazwini, about A. D. 1275, 

 and the Minorite friar, John of Montecorvino, about 1293; and Hanbury makes the 

 highly probable suggestion that the Chinese, who were acquainted with C. Cassia, a 

 very similar tree, and who traded with Ceylon and the coast of Malabar, were con- 

 cerned in the discovery of the value of the Ceylon bark. The Chalias, the caste to 

 which the peeling and preparation of cinnamon bark is now restricted in Ceylon, are 

 said to have emigrated from India in the thirteenth century; and in the following 

 century Mohammedan writers were well acquainted with Ceylon cinnamon and the 

 difference between it and Chinese and Indian cassia. One of them, writing in 1368 of 

 "Darchini". says "the best is that which comes from Ceylon", while the best Chinese 

 cassia ("salikheh") is, he says, thick, reddish, a little bitter and astringent, but sweeter 

 than Indian Kirfah which "tastes like cloves". 



The Portuguese, arriving in Ceylon in 1505 1 ), found the cinnamon in a wild state, 

 and exacted a tribute of 250000 lbs. of bark annually from the Sinhalese king. Garcia 

 da Orta, about the middle of the same century, speaks of Ceylon cinnamon as worth 

 four times as much as that from Malabar, and the Portuguese occupation of Ceylon 

 in 1536 is stated to have been accomplished chiefly for the sake of the cinnamon. 

 After the Dutch conquest in 1656 the Government monopoly of the export of bark was 

 strictly maintained, but it was under the Dutch auspices that, about 1770, the cultiva- 

 tion of the tree was commenced. The entire European demand, stated to have been 

 about 400000 lbs. a year, was then supplied from Ceylon; and, after the British con- 

 quest in 1796, the annual production, during the monopoly of the East India Company, 

 which lasted until 1833, did not exceed 500000 lbs. The Dutch began the cultivation 

 of the tree in Java in 1825, and, while a heavy export duty was imposed on Ceylon 

 bark until 1853, the competition of Javanese bark and of Chinese cassia told upon the 

 Ceylon industry. 



Cinnamon barks and chips from Madagascar, received by Roure-Bertrand Fils 2 ), 

 yielded on steam distillation 0.17 percent, of essential oil of the following properties: 

 d 17Q 0.9715, di 5 o 0.9731, « 170 — 5°49\ acid v. 2.49, aldehyde content 48 percent.; in- 

 completely soluble in 70 percent, alcohol, soluble in 1 vol. of 80 per cent, alcohol; on 

 addition of more alcohol, turbidity which disappeared again, however, when the 

 quantity of alcohol reached 10 volumes. 



*) Vasco da Gama reached the coast of Malabar already in 1498. — 2 ) Bull. Roura-Bertraml Fils, 

 October 1921, 35. 



