MELALEUCA CAJUPUTI. 
215 
This elegant, useful, and small tree is a native of the Molucca 
Islands, and it is from its leaves that the valuable medicine called 
Cajuputi Oil is obtained. 
The following account we transcribe from the Transactions of the 
Medico-Botanical Society of London, from the description furnished 
to the Society by Thomas Henry Colebrooke, Esq., F.R. S. from the 
MS. of Dr. Roxburgh: — " During my absence at the Cape of Good 
Hope, on account of bad health, in 1798, Dr. John Fleming had 
charge of the Botanic Garden ; at the same time, Mr. Smith, the 
nurseryman, was employed on the Molucca Island^, collecting plants 
for the garden, consequently an excellent time for obtaining growing 
plants of the trees ; Dr. Fleming, therefore, gave Mr. Smith strict 
orders to l)e very careful to get the proper sort, (two or three being 
mentioned by Rumpbius) from which the best oil was obtained. 
This commission, Mr. S. executed to our satisfaction; many thriving 
plants having been sent to the garden by the close of the year, 
where they grow freely ; and in six or seven years they began to 
blossom at various tim^es of the year, which they have hitherto con- 
tinued to do, and to ripen their seeds perfectly. F'rom them nu- 
merous plants have been reared, and not only distributed over many 
parts of the continent of India, but sent to various other quarters 
of the world. It is from the original young trees, now (1811) thirteen 
years old, that the following description and accompanying figures 
are taken." 
The trunk is tolerably, erect, but crooked, and slender for the age 
of the trees ; the bark is of a very light or whitish ash colour, soft, 
thick, and spongy, pretty smooth on the surface, and the exterior 
lamina peels off from time to time in thin flakes, hke the birch 
tree; and the interior bark maybe separated into numerous lamina, 
like the leaves of a book ; branches scattered, with slender twigs, 
often drooping as completely as in the weeping willow ; they are 
round and smooth; young shoots sericeous; height of the young 
tree when thirteen years old, about twenty feet, and the thickest 
part of the trunk not more than a man's leg, includiff^ the bark, 
which is three quarters of an inch thick; the leaves are alternate, 
and project in every direction, short petioled, narrow, lanceolate; 
while young sericeous ; when full grown, smooth, deep green, three 
and five nerved, sometimes slightly falcate; entire length, from three 
to five inches, and from half to three quarters of an inch broad ; on 
being bruised they smell strong of the substance they yield, yet the 
cells which contain this aromatic fluid are scarce visible in the fresh 
leaves ; the spikes are terminal, and from the extreme axils, downy ; 
