NAT. ORDER. — LOMENTACE^. 
35 
Barton) appear on examination, that such situations are exsiccated 
swamps or meadows. It delig-hts in a low, moist, gravelly, or sandy- 
soil, preferring" the borders of rivers, creeks, and such watery places, 
to any other situations ; and flowers from the last of June to the first 
of August. It was said to be introduced into England in the year 
1723, by Peter Collinson, Esq., where it flowered from August till 
October. 
The generic name of this plant is of Asiatic origin, and was 
first brought into Greece along with the commercial article which it 
denoted, by the Phoenician merchants. The specific appellation was 
given by Linnaeus, in conformity with the common custom, of which 
later discoveries have shown the impropriety ; that of naming a new 
species of any genus, from the particular place whence it was sent to 
him. Though the first specimens of Cassia Marilandica were trans- 
mitted to Linnaeus from the state of Maryland, the plant is now known 
to be extremely common in almost every state in the Union, south and 
west of New York. Inappropriate as the specific name is, however, 
It still does, and always ought to, stand unchanged. 
The naturalist has often reason to lament that travelers and mer- 
chants have given the name of one thing long known to another recent- 
ly discovered, on account of a real or fancied resemblance in a single 
particular, though in every other respect it has been entirely different. 
Such has been the fate of Cassia. In the middle ages, the Arabian 
and Greek physicians, as appears from the writings of Avicenna and 
Myrepsus, acknowledged two kinds of Cassia ; one. Cassia aromatica, 
a native of India, the Cassia of the ancients : — the other. Cassia solu- 
tiva, a native of Egypt, totally different in its general appearance, bo- 
tanical characters, and medical quaUties ; and which appears to have 
been honored with the same name as that which from time immemo- 
rial had distinguished the precious oriental spice, merely on account of 
its pleasant smell ; for we are informed by Alpinus, that when he was 
in Egypt, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, the natives took 
great delight in walking early in the morning in the spring season 
