are twenty-one, linear, parallel, distinct, single-valved, and fixed longitudinally to the nectary: the germen is ovate, placed above the insertion of the corolla, and supports a cylindrical style, furnished with two obtuse rough convex stigmata: the fruit is an oblong berry, coutaining four kidney-shaped seeds of unequal size *.

It appears a little surprising, that the canella, which is a native of the West Indies, and of which figures have been given by Plukenet, Sloane, Catesby, Browne, and others, should have been generally confounded with the tree which produces the cortex winteranus: even the younger Linnæus, who describes this tree under the genus Winterania, from a specimen in the herbarium of Montin, has acknowledged that he could not discover how far it differed from the Drimys or Wintera of Murray.

The well known specimen which was given by Dr. Swartz, to the Linnæan Society, accompanied with a botanical history of the tree, must, we should think, remove every doubt con. cerning the true characters of canella alba; and by comparing Woodville's plate with that published of the wintera aromatica, in the fifth volume of Medical Observations and Inquiries by Drs. Fother gill and Solander, it may be observed how far the tree, which produces the cortex winteranus, differs from that of our plant, the bark of which is the officinal canella alba. The latter appears from Clusius to have been first introduced into Britain about the year 1600; the former was known in England twenty years before, and took its name from William Winter, captain of one of the ships which accompanied Sir Francis Drake to the Straits of Magellan, from whence he brought this bark to Europe in 1579. John Bauhin appears to be the first who confounded the names of these barks, by styling the cortex winteranus, Canella alba; and as Sir Hans

"The whole tree (according to Dr. Swartz) is very aromatic, and when in blossom perfumes the whole neighbourhood. The flowers dried, and softened again in warm water, have a fragrant odour, nearly approaching to that of musk. The leaves have a strong smell of laurel. The berries, after having been some time green, turn blue, and become at last of a black glossy colour, and have a faint aromatic taste and smell. They are, when ripe, as well as the fruit of several kinds of laurel, very agreeable to the white-bellied and baldpate pigeons, (Columba Jamaicensis & leucocephala), which feeding greedily upon them, acquire that peculiar flavour so much admired in the places where they are found.

+ See Woodville, vol. ii. p. 319.

Stoane, who has given a separate description of both trees, and was sensible of a difference in the taste of their barks, seems to insinuate that this might depend upon the place of growth, his remarks did not wholly remove the error.

Professor Murray, in his fourteenth edition of the Systema Vegetabilium, was the first who made a distinct genus of canella, and thus corrected the mistake of Linnæus, who, disregarding the evidence of the old botanists, combined two genera under the name of Laurus winterana; but he afterwards made it a separate genus, and called it Winterania, a name by which it has been long universally, though improperly, distinguished. Mr. Aiton, who has followed Murray in considering the canella, as differing generically from the tree named after Winter, informs us, that it was cultivated by Mr. Philip Miller at Chelsea, in 1739.

The officinal canella alba is the bark of the branches of this tree, freed from its outward covering, and dried in the shade. It is brought to Europe in long quills, which are about three quarters of an inch in diameter, somewhat thicker than cinnamon, and both externally and internally of a whitish or light brown colour, with a yellowish hue, and commonly intermixed with thicker pieces, which are probably obtained from the trunk of the tree. This bark in taste is moderately warm, aromatic, and bitterish; its smell is agreeable, and resembles that of cloves. Its virtues are extracted most perfectly by proof spirit. "In distillation with water it yields an essential oil of a dark yellowish colour, of a thick tenacious consistence, difficultly separable from the aqueous fluid, in smell suf ficiently grateful, though rather less so than the bark itself: the remaining decoction, inspissated, leaves an extract of great bitterness, in consistence not uniform, seemingly composed of a resinous and gummy matter, imperfectly mixed. On inspissating the spiri tuous tincture, the spirit which distils has no great smell or taste of the canella, but is so far impregnated with its more volatile oil, as to turn milky on the admixture of water: the remaining extract retains the bitterness of the bark, but has little more of its warmth or flavour than the extract made with water."

The use of canella alba now supersedes that of the old bark of Winter, on the authority of both the London and Edinburgh pharmacopoeias. It has been supposed to possess a considerable share of medicinal power, and is said to be an useful medicine in

the scurvy, and some other complaints; but it is now considered merely in the character of an aromatic, and like many of the spices. is chiefly employed for the purpose of correcting and rendering less disagreeable the more powerful and nauseous drugs. It is therefore an ingredient in the aloetic powder of the London college, and in the bitter tincture, bitter wine, &c. of the Edinburgh dispensatory. Swartz tells us, that "this bark, together with the fruit of capsicum, was formerly a common ingredient in the food and drink of the Caribs, the ancient natives of the Antilles; and even at present it makes a necessary addition to the meagre pot of the negroes."

The Wintera aromatica, or Winter's bark, was formerly employed for the medical purposes of the canella of the present day, and was by many botanists, confounded with it.

This last is a very large tree, often rising to the height of fifty feet. It is a native of the Streights of Magellan and Terra del Fuego. Dr. Solander relates that "the tree which produces the Winter's bark was utterly unknown to the Europeans till the return of Captain John Winter, who, in the year 1577, sailed with Sir Francis Drake, as commander of a ship called the Elizabeth, destined for the South Seas; but immediately after they had got through the Streights of Magellan, Captain Winter, on the 8th of October, was obliged, by stress of weather, to part company, and to go back again into the Streights, from whence he returned into England in June 1579, and brought with him several pieces of this aromatic bark, which Clusius called after him Cortex Winteranus. Se veral authors have mentioned it since in their botanical works; but all they have said has been copied from Clusius. No more was heard of this bark till the Dutch fleet, under Admiral Van Nort, returned from the Streights of Magellan, in the year 1600. Afterwards all the navigators who passed through the Streights of Ma. gellan took notice of the tree, on account of the usefulness of its bark but none furnished any description that could make it botanically known before Mr. George Handasyd came back from the Streights of Magellan in 1691, and brought with him some dried specimens, which he gave to Sir Hans Sloane, and are now preserved in the British Museum. From these specimens, and the account Mr. Handysyd gave of this tree, Sir Hans Sloane drew up a history, and gave a figure in the Philosophical Transactions. Still the systematical botanists could not give it a place in their catalogues,

being unacquainted with its flowers and fruit." However this loss was supplied by the industry of Mr. Wallis, captain of the Dolphin who returned from the South Seas in 1768, bringing with him se veral botanical specimens of the Winter's bark-tree, one of which came into the possession of Dr. John Fothergill, who caused an engraving of it to be made by Ehret, which is published, together with its botanical description written by Dr. Solander, in the fifth volume of the Medical Observations and Inquiries.

[Murray. Aiton. Miller. Woodville.

SECTION X.

Myrrh.

Mimosa Troglodyte.—BRUCE.

BOTANY, even medical botany, is still in a very imperfect state, notwithstanding all the pains that have been taken during the last half century, more especially to obtain accuracy. The two or three last sections have offered us proofs of this to a certain extent: and the material before us is still more in point; for at this hour we are totally ignorant of the tree that produces it. This tree we have called, indeed, a Mimosa, upon the authority of Bruce, who regards it as a co-species of the Acacia vera, which is unquestionably a species of mimosa*. His history and description of this ancient and elegant gum-resin is as follows.

"The ancients, and especially Dioscorides, spoke of myrrh in such a manner as to make us suppose, either that they have described a drug which they had never seen; or that the drug seen and described by them is absolutely unknown to modern naturalists and physicians. The Arabs, however, who form the link of the chain between the Greek physicians and ours, in whose country the myrrh was produced, and whose language gave it its name, have left us undeniable evidence, that what we know by the name of myrrh, is in nothing different from the myrrh of the ancients, grow. ing in the same countries from which it was brought formerly to Greece; that is, from the east coast of Arabia Felix, bordering on the Indian Ocean, and that low land in Abyssinia on the south-east of the Red Sea, included nearly between the 12th and 13th degree

See chapter vii, sect, article Gum Arabic, Mimosa Nilotica.

of north latitude, and limited on the west by a meridian passing through the island Massowa, and on the east by another passing through Cape Guardsoy, without the straits of Babelmandel. This country the Greeks knew by the name of Troglodytia; not to be confounded with another nation of Troglodytes, very different in all respects, living in the forests between Abyssinia and Nubia. The myrrh of the Troglodytes was always, as now, preferred to that of Arabia. That part of Abyssinia being half overrun and settled, half wasted and abandoned, by a barbarous nation from the southward, very little correspondence or commerce has been since carried on between the Arabians and that coast; unless by some desperate adventures of Mahometan merchants, made under accidental circumstances, which have sometimes succeeded, and very often like. wise have miscarried.

The most frequent way by which this Troglodyte myrrh is exported, is from Massowa, a small Abyssinian island, on the coast of the Red Sea. Yet the quantity of Abyssinian myrrh is so very small, in comparison of that of Arabia sent to Grand Cairo, that we may safely attribute to this only the reason why our myrrh is not so good in quality as the myrrh of the ancients, which was Abyssinian. Though those barbarians make use of the gum, leaves, and bark of this tree, in diseases to which they are subject, yet as very little is wanted for such purposes, and the tree is the common timber of the country, this does not hinder them from cutting it down every day, to burn for the common uses of life; and as they never plant, or replace the trees destroyed, it is probable that in some years the true Troglodyte myrrh will not exist; and the erroneous descriptions of the Greek physicians will lead posterity, as they have done us now, into various conjectures, all of them false, on the question what that myrrh of the ancients was?

Though the myrrh of the Troglodytes was superior to any Arabian, yet the Greeks perceived that it was not all of equal goodness. Pliny and Theophrastus makes this difference to arise from the trees being partly wild, partly cultivated. But this is an imaginary reason: all the trees were wild. But it was the age of the tree and its health, the manner of making the cut or wound in it, the time of gathering the myrrh, and the circumstances of the climate when it was gathered, that constantly determined, and does yet determine, the quality of the drug. In order to have myrrh of the first, or