ON THE LAURUS CASSIA. 
221 
ing lauded on account of the aromatic properties of its bark 
and leaves, which resemble the true cinnamon, though it is 
not the genuine cinnamon tree, he seems to have considered 
himself quite safe in associating this also, and called the three 
species, this tria juncto in uno plant, Laurus Cassia, and 
assigned it as the source of the officinal " Cassia Lignea 
Cortex." 
After this exposition of the origin of the species Laurus 
Cassia, it can scarcely be a matter of surprise that, no two bo- 
tanists have ever agreed as to the plant which ought to bear 
the name; nor that not one of them should ever have surmis- 
ed what plant Linnaeus had constituted the typeof his species. 
It is not my intention on the present occasion to extend these 
remarks, by tracing the various conjectures that have been 
promulgated on the subject; suffice it to say that no one, so 
far as I am aware, has taken a similar view as that now ex- 
plained. It only further remains for me to give some account 
of the three species thus erroneously associated. 
The first mentioned, Dawalkurundu, Linnaeus's own plant 
and the type of the species, is, I believe, the Laurus Involu- 
crata of Vahl, and of Lamarck in the " Encyclopedic Metho- 
dique," and has in Professor Nees's Monograph of the Indian 
Laurinx (Wall. Plant. As. rariores,) received the name of 
Tetradenia Zeylanica, but is the Litsea Zeylanica of a 
former work of his, a name which I presume must be restored, 
owing to the other being preoccupied. The slight difference 
of structure does not seem to render a new genus necessary. 
The second and third have both been referred, by the same 
eminent botanist, to his variety of the true cinnamon, the Cin- 
namomum Zeylanicum, a decision to which I cannot sub- 
scribe, as I cannot perceive that either of these figures are re- 
ferable to any form of that species, and they besides differ 
specifically from each other. 
The Cinnamomum perpetuo flore?is, appears to me a per- 
fectly distinct species, very nearly allied to, if not actually 
identical with, Nees's own species C. sulphuratum, of which 
I have now got specimens from Ceylon. This I infer from 
