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REMARKS ON THE CINNAMOMUM TREE*. 
Cinnamon — Laurus cinnamomum — is said to be indigenous only to the island 
of Ceylon, and even there confined to a small district in the south-western part of 
that island. There are, however, doubts, whether the inferior sorts, found in other 
places, known by the name of Cassia, and considered by botanists as a distinct 
species (Laurus cassia), be not the very same tree, deteriorated by being produced 
on a soil and in a climate less adapted for the development of its finer qualities. 
Whether it be cinnamon or cassia, the bark of the tree, freed from the external 
part, forms the spice. 
Although, ever since the Dutch first had a settlement in Ceylon, cinnamon be- 
came to them a lucrative article of trade, and one which they strove by every means 
wholly to monopolise, this tree was not made by them an object of cultivation in 
Ceylon until 1766. Before that period, cinnamon was collected in the forests and 
jungles, since an idea prevailed that its excellence depended on its spontaneous 
growth, and that if once subjected to culture it would no longer be genuine. 
Laurus cinnamomum ; or, Cinnamomum verum. 
When Falk was appointed governor of Ceylon, he felt the inconvenience of 
depending for a regular supply on such a resource, the more especially as the greater 
part of the cinnamon-trees lay in the dominions of the king of Candy, who frequently, 
with or without apparent reason, refused the cinnamon peelers admission into his 
* Library of Entertaining Knowledge — Vegetable Substances, page 341. 
