Like other Cinnamomum species, Cinnamomum Tamala, Nees et Eberm., a medium-sized tree widely distributed throughout Southern Asia, yields the so-called Mutterzimt, the Cassia lignea, Xylocassia or Holzcassia, known as cassia in the retail trade. The leaves formerly entered commerce as narrow Folia Mala-bathri, but are now obsolete. However, they are still used for medicinal purposes in the East Indies. They contain a volatile oil which was distilled by j. H. Burkill in Calcutta and examined by Schimmel & Co.5). The oil was lemon-yellow in color and possessed a clove-like and at the same time faintly pepper-like odor. It had the following constants: d15o1,0257; aD+16°37'; nD20o1,52596; phenol content 78p.c; soluble in 1,2 or more vol. of 70 p. c. alcohol. The oil contains eugenol (m. p. of benzoyl derivative 69°). The oil deprived of phenols had a high optical rotation (aD + 66° 40') and yielded a solid nitrite which, after distillation from acetic ether, melted at 113 to 114°. Hence d-a-phellandrene was present. So far as its high eugenol content is concerned, the oil is closely related to the common cinnamon leaf oil.

1) Pharmaceutical Joum. 63 (1899), 330 and 326.

2) The constituents of the volatile oil of the bark of Cinnamomum pedatinervium of Fiji. Thesis, London 1903.

3) The tree has been described by Berthold Seemann in his Flora Vitiensis p. 202.

4) A.Angeli and E.Rimini, Gazz. chim. ital. 2o II. (1895), 200. 5) Report of Schimmel & Co. April 1910, 122.

According to Baker1) the leaves contain camphor.