THE cinnamon tree has been known to live two hundred years and its history is nearly as old as the history of man. It appears to have been the first spice sought after in all Oriental voyages, and is one of the few condiments that has been honored with a price that only the wealthy can buy. Both cinnamon and cassia are mentioned as precious odoriferous substances in the Masonic writings. Bible history mentions cinnamon at a very early date in Exodus, Chap. XXX, 23; in Proverbs, Chap. VII, 17; in Song of Solomon, Chap. IV, 14, being then introduced by the Phœnicians. It was likewise known to the Greeks and Romans under the name of kinnamomun. Vespasian, on his return from Palestine, dedicated to the Goddess of Peace, in one of the temples of the Capitol, garlands of cinnamon enclosed in polished gold, and in the temple built on Mount Palatine by the Empress Augusta in honor of Augustus Cæsar, her husband, was placed a root of the cinnamon tree set in a golden cup. It is recorded that two hundred and ten burthens of spice were consumed on the funeral pile of Sylla, and that Nero burnt at the obsequies of his wife, Poppæa, a quantity of cinnamon and cassia exceeding the whole importation of one year. Dr. Carl Schumann’s Kritische Untersuchungen über die Zimtländer, published as a supplement to Petermann’s Geographische Mitteilungen, is a most erudite contribution to history of geography and commerce. The author carefully examines the notices on cinnamon and cassia to be found in the writings of the ancients and of the Arabs, and critically examines these by the light of modern research. The ancient Egyptians procured their cinnamon from punt, which is identified with the Rego Cinnamonifera at the promontory of Garadafiri of the modern Somaliland. But neither cinnamon nor cassia was a product of this region, nor are they at the present time, which is amply proved and illustrated by a consideration of the geographical distribution of the Louracea. Arabian merchants intentionally shrouded in mystery their manner or place of obtaining cinnamon and, in consequence, the ancients entertained the most preposterous ideas on the subject. The “Khisit” of the inscriptions of the temple of Doral Bahari is correctly translated cinnamon or cassia. The latter word and the gizi of Galen and the Keziah of the Hebrew are derived from it, but it is of itself a corruption of Kei-shi, the Chinese name for cassia. From this fact, the author concludes that China supplied the ancient world with most, if not all, of its cinnamon, but did so through traders settled in parts of Arabia or the Somali coast, who maintained their monopoly until the discovery of cinnamon in the Island of Ceylon.