1839] 



Remarks on Laurus Cassia. 



135 



cinnamon plant, the bark of the older branches of which, it would appear, 

 exported from that coast as Cassia. Three or four more species are na- 

 tives of Ceylon, exclusive of the cinnamon proper, all of which greatly 

 resemble the cinnamon plant, and in the woods might easily be mistaken 

 for it, and peeled, though the produce might be inferior. Thus we have 

 from Western India and Ceylon alone, probably not less than six plants 

 producing Cassia ; add to these nearly twice as many more species of cin- 

 namomum, the produce of the more eastern states of Asia and the Islands 

 of the Eastern Archipelago, all remarkable for their striking family 

 likeness, all I believe endowed with aromatic properties, and probably 

 the greater part if not the whole contributing something towards the 

 general result, and we at once see the impossibility of awarding to any 

 one individual species the credit of being the source wdience the Cassia 

 Lignea of commerce is derived ; and equally the impropriety of applying 

 to any one of them the comprehensive specific appellation of Cassia, 

 since all sorts of cinnamon-like plants, yielding bark of a quality unfit to 

 bear the designation of cinnamon in the market, are passed off as Cassia. 



Yl.~Report upon the Run of the Sea, and Set of the Tides at Madras 

 during the North-Bast Monsoon.— Bij T. G. Taylor, Esq. Honora- 

 ble Company's Astronomer. 



To do justice to an enquiry of this nature, it will no doubt be considered 

 necessary that observations should have been continued throughout 

 several monsoons, whereby a knowledge of maximum and minimum ef- 

 fects would have been attained—instead of the particular ones which 

 have been observed in the monsoon of 1838, upon which this report en- 

 tirely depends ; it hence appears necessary that the particulars of the 

 weather experienced in the monsoon of 1838 should first be stated. 



The S. W. wind continued to blow steadily up to the 16th October, 

 on which day the N. E. wind set in in a somewhat abrupt and threat- 

 ening manner ; but, relaxing again on the 17th to the S. and S. W., the 

 weather continued fine until the 24th, when the wind again shifted to 

 the N. E. : from this day (which may be considered the commencement 

 of the monsoon) up to the lOth December, when fine weather again 

 returned, the subjoined meteorological register will exhibit the nature 

 of the weather experienced. 



