Sent by Dr Wallich to the Messrs Shepherd at Li- 
verpool, where it flowered in June 1825, under the name of 
Laurus nitida, and I find that it perfectly agrees with an un- 
published figure of L. nitida of Koxburgh, in the possession 
of the East India Company. It is there mentioned as a na- 
tive of Sumatra, and as the Cassia of Mr Marsden in his 
History of Sumatra, p, 156. If so, it is a tree whose root is 
said to produce so much camphor, that the bark is bought by 
the Dutch merchants, and shipped to Spain for real cinnamon, 
and that the price it bears in the island is ten or twelve dollars 
the pekul. 
The leaves of our plant have the same fragrant smell and 
the same flavour as the Laurus Cassia of our gardens * ; but 
in that plant, the leaves are broader at the base, sharp at the 
point, the nerves disappearing before the point, the young ones 
very red, and the panicles remarkably lax and spreading. It 
comes, indeed, nearer the true cinnamon, but the leaves are in 
our plant much smaller and very glossy. I possess what I con- 
sider the same plant in my herbarium, from Prince of Wales's 
Island, only that the leaves are narrower. The Prince of 
Wales Island plant Dr Hamilton considers to be the same 
with his L. Taviala. 
I have followed Mr Brown in keeping Cinnamomum dis- 
tinct from the true Laurus {L. nobilis), which has dioecious 
flowers, a much greater number of stamens, and only two cells 
to the anthers, besides a different habit. 
Fig. 1. Flower. Fig. 2. Flower cut open, to shew the stamens and glands. 
Fig. 3. Front view of an outer stamen. Fig. 4. Back view of an inner 
stamen. Fig. 5. Pistil — All more or less magnified. 
* And of Bot. Mag. 1. 1636. The L. Cassia figured by Nees von Esenbeck in his 
" De Cinnamomo Disputatio," t. 3. appears exactly to correspond with the present plant, 
only that the staminal glands are not represented. It would be impossible, perhaps, to 
determine what Linnjeus meant by his Laurus Cassia. He refers to figures in the 
Hortus Malabaricus and Burm. Zeyl. which appear to repressnt two very different 
plants ; but both have very acute leaves, which is not the case with ours or Nees's 
plants. 
