The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom / Considered in Their Various Uses to Man and in Their Relation to the Arts and Manufactures; Forming a Practical Treatise & Handbook of Reference for the Colonist, Manufacturer, Merchant, and Consumer, on the Cultivation, Preparation for Shipment, and Commercial Value, &c. of the Various Substances Obtained From Trees and Plants, Entering into the Husbandry of Tropical and Sub-tropical Regions, &c.

by P. L. Simmonds

4. Kahate or canalle kuroondu, astringent cinnamon. In this species the bark peels off very easily, and smells agreeably when fresh, but it has a bitter taste.

5. Savel kuroondu, mucilaginous or glutinous cinnamon. This sort acquires a very considerable degree of hardness, which the chewing of it sufficiently proves. It has otherwise little taste, and an ungrateful smell; but the color is very fine, and it is often mixed with the first and best sort; the color being much alike, excepting only that in the good sort some few yellowish spots appear towards the extremities.

6. Dawool kuroondu, or drum cinnamon. The wood of this tree, when grown hard, is light and tough, and the natives make some of their vessels and drums of it. The bark is of a pale color.

7. Nika kuroondu, wild cinnamon, whose leaf resembles that of the nicasol (Vitex Negundo). The bark of this tree has neither taste or smell when peeled, and is made use of by the natives only in physic, and to extract an oil from to anoint their bodies.

8. Mal kuroondu, flowering cinnamon, because this tree is always in blossom. The substance of the wood never becomes so solid and weighty in this as in the other named species, which are sometimes nine or ten feet in circumference. If this ever-flowering cinnamon be cut or bored, a limpid water will issue out of the wound; but it is of use only for the leaves and bark.

9. Toupat kuroondu, trefoil cinnamon, of which there are three varieties, which grow in the mountains and valleys of the interior about Kandy.

10. We kuroondu, white ant's cinnamon.

The first-named four of these are, however, alone varieties of the Cinnamonum verum.

Good cinnamon is known by the following properties:—It is thin and rather pliable; it ought to be about the substance of royal paper, or somewhat thicker. It admits of a considerable degree of pressure, and bends before it breaks; the fracture is then splintering. It is of a light color, approaching to yellow, bordering but little upon the brown; it possesses a sweetish taste, at the same time it is not stronger than can be borne without pain, and is not succeeded by any after-taste. The more cinnamon departs from these characteristics, the coarser and less serviceable it is esteemed; and it should be rejected if it be hard, and thick as a half-crown piece; if it be very dark colored or brown; if it be very pungent and hot on the tongue, with a taste bordering upon that of cloves, so that it cannot be suffered without pain. Particular care should be taken that it is not false-packed, or mixed with cinnamon of a common sort.

The following remarks, by Mr. Dunewille, of Malacca, as to the suitability of the Straits' Settlements for cinnamon culture, are interesting, although in some instances a repetition of previous observations:—