KIDDAH (rilp), as well as KETZIOTH, is ren dered CAssIA in our A. V.; but translators do not uniformly coincide in, though the great majority are in favour of, this interpretation. It is well known that the Greeks were acquainted with seve ral varieties of cassia ; and as one of these was called kitto, K477-Ct5 (Dioscor. 12), this has been thought to be the same word as the Hebrew trip, from lip, in Arabic to split, hew, or tear anything lengthwise, as must be done in separating cassia bark from the tree. But it does not follow that this is a correct interpretation of the origin of the name of an Eastern product The word occurs first in Exod. xxx. 24, where cassia (kiddak) is mentioned in connection with olive oil, pure myrrh, sweet cinnamon, and sweet calarnus ; secondly, in Ezek. xxvii. 19, where Dan and Javan are described as bringing bright iron, cassia (kida'alz), and cala mus to the markets of Tyre. There is no reason why the substance now called cassia ;night not have been imported from the shores of India into Egypt and Palestine. Considerable confusion has, however, been created by the same name having been applied by botanists to a genus containing the plants yielding senna, and to others, as the cassia fistula, which have nothing to do with the original cassia. Cassia-buds, again, though no doubt pro duced by a plant belonging to the same, or to some genus allied to that producing cinnamon and cassia, were probably not known in commerce at so early a period as the two latter substances.
There is some difficulty also in determining what the ancient cassia was. The author of this article, in his Antiquity of Hindoo Afedzchze, p. 84, has already remarked, The cassia of the ancients it is not easy to determine ; that of commerce, Mr. Marshall says, consists of only the inferior kinds of cinnamon. Some consider cassia to be dis tinguished from cinnamon by the outer cellular covering of the bark being scraped off the latter, but allowed to remain on the former. This is, however, the characteristic of the (Cochin-Chinese) chznanzonzum aromaticum, as we are informed by Mr. Crawford (Embassy to Siam, p. 470) that it is not cured, like that of Ceylon, by freeing it from the epidermis.' There is, certainly, no doubt that some cassia is produced on the coast of Malabar. The name also would appear to be of Eastern ori gin, as kasse koronde is one kind of cinnamon, as mentioned by Burmann in his Flora Zeylonica ; but it will be prefemble to treat of the whole sub ject in connection with cinnamon [KINNANtord.— J. F. R.