Volume 1

Ceylon : an account of the island, physical, historical, and topographical, with notices of its natural history, antiquities and productions / by Sir James Emerson Tennent.

  • James Emerson Tennent
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ceylon : an account of the island, physical, historical, and topographical, with notices of its natural history, antiquities and productions / by Sir James Emerson Tennent. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    25/450 (page 5)
    mon trees, wliicli diffused tlieir fragrance at a great distance out to sea. The air in many parts of Ceylon is higlil}^ perfumed for miles, from plants and flowers, such as the lemon grass {Andro- ])ogon)j which is quite overpowering, also the nilla {AcantJiaccce), with its odour of honey, and the coffee plantations, when in blossom, with their jessamine perfume, but little proceeds from cinnamon until the leaves are crushed in the hand. The perfumes which have been mentioned, however, rai^ely extend out to sea, although there can be no doubt fragrant odours are occasionally wafted from tropical lands. Columbus thought he perceived sweet odours in the air when in the Antilles, four days before they saw the land; Sir Walter Ealeigh fancied them on the coast of Carolina, and the Por- tuguese scented them near the Senegambia. More recent explorers in the Antilles have traced an odour of violets some- times perceptible off the coast of Cuba, to a climbing plant,^ a species of Tetracera, which diffuses its fragrance at night. Burnes says the plains of Peshawur are perfumed with violets and thyme.^ All the odours of Cejdon are not of a pleasant nature, on the south-eastern coast the blossoms of a tree called Stercidia foetida diffuse an intolerable odour resembling dead animals, and a family of plants belonging to the order RuhiacecE, have been named Dysodidendron by Dr. Gardner^ in consequence of their offensive properties. Pliny (xii. 42) writes about the spicy breezes of India and Arabia, saying, “when the sun reaches the meridian the entire peninsula exhales an indescribable perfume, which extends far out to sea.” This kind of romance, which is as old as Ctesias, has been repeated by writers and poets in all ages ; the Ma- layan breezes of western India are as famous with the Hindus as the Saba3an in the west.^ Agatharchides (n.c. 104), writing of Sabia, says its very air is so perfumed with odours that the ^ Poeppig, ({noted by Sir E. Teiineiit, i. 2. Burnes’ Cabool, ii. 60, Calcutta Jour., vii. 2. ■* Wilford, Asia. Res., x. 146 ; Vincent, Coin, of the Anc., p. 32.