Sent by Dr Waxuicu 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 Roxpureu, in the possession 
of the Kast India Company. It is there mentioned as a na- 
tive of Sumatra, and as the Cassia of Mr MarspeEn 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 4 is ten or twelve dollars 
the pekul. pee ae s 
‘The leaves of our sien have ie same fragrant smell and 
the same flavour as the Lawrus 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 Hami.Ton considers to be the same 
wid his L. Tamala. : | 
~ IT have followed Mr Brown in ae ateinionin dis- 
tinct from the true Laurus (L. nobilis), which has dicecious 
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. t. 1636. The L. Cassia figured by Nurs 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 Linnzvus meant by his Laurus Cassia. He refers to figures in the 
Hortus Malabaricus and Burm. Zeyl. which appear to represent two very different 
plants ; but both have very acute leaves, which is not the case with ours or NEEs’s 
plants. 
