372 



JOURNAL R. A. S. (CEYLON). [Vol. III. 



CINNAMON. 



By James D'Alwis, Esq. 



Considerable doubt was, sometime ago, raised by Sir 

 James Emerson Tennent,* as to the opinion generally enter- 

 tained by Botanists and Historians,— that " the Cinnamon 

 plant is indigenous to Ceylon." During the prosecution of 

 his inquiries upon the matter, my attention was invited to 

 the subject ; and the result of my investigations is embodied 

 in the following extracts of a letter which I addressed to him, 

 and which, from the peculiar interest which attaches to the 

 question in a historical point of view, I beg to lay before 

 this Society. 



If Cinnamon ( 'Lauras Cinnamonun, Lin. Cinnamomurn 

 Zeylanicum* Nees.) were introduced into Ceylon from the 

 neighbouring Continents of Asia and Africa, it is but 

 reasonable to expect that it is still to be found in them. 

 It is not a little curious, however, that no Cinnamon grows 

 in the latter — at lea«t in the vicinity of Abyssinia, which is 

 described by travellers as possessing a soil anything but 

 favorable to the growth of Cinnamon.! It is also, I believe, 

 a fact, that during the Dutch Government in Ceylon, Java 

 was not considered to produce either Cinnamon { or Cassia, 

 though, doubtless, the latter was found in a wild state; 



* He lias embodied the result of his researches in his " History of 

 Ceylon," vol. 1. p. 599, et seq. 



f Speaking oi "the Eastern Coast of Africa to the unknown regions," 

 Laurent, in his Ancient Geography, describes it as "those parched lands 

 over which Arabs roved in former days as in the present.'' — p. 348. 



X In the year 1827, twenty-live boxes of Cinnamon plants, besides 

 a considerable quantity of seeds, were introduced into Batavia, smuggled 

 from Ceylon, by an agent in the service of the Dutch Government.— 

 See Asiatic Journal, 1827, vol. xvi. pp. 282-3. 



