184
ILLUSTRATIONS OF INDIAN BOTANY.
remote from the acrimony of those, the produce of Anacardiaceae, mark these trihes as not very correctly associated in the same natural order, and go far to confirm the propriety of their separation not merely as tribes of one larger order, but as distinct orders. The Peninsular flora embraces several species of this tribe, some of them affording useful products. The resinous juice of both species of BomoeUia is collected, and is used partly as frankincense and partly as pitch. That of Can avium commune has properties similar to Copaiva, while the kernels of the seed, on the other hand, afford by expression a bland edible oil. The Can avium stvictum Roxb. is known in Malabar under the name of the black dammer tree, in conh-adistinction to the f r atevia or white dammer. This tree is- rather common in the alpine forests about Courtal- lum in the Tinnevelly district, and is there regularly rented for the sake of its dammer. The dammer is transparent and of a deep brownish yellow or amber colour when held between the eye and the light, but when adhering to the tree has a bright shining black appearance. The flowers of this species 1 have not seen, the fruit is a very hard, 3-celled, oval nut, tapering at each end.
Of the species of the genus Pvotium, of which the Peninsular flora embraces 4 or 5, I have not heard that any are in this country turned to a useful purpose. The three first in our list, to which the genus is now restricted, are all jungle trees, with soft very fragile wood, but so far as I recollect, never exhuding resinous juices — the fourth, Balsamodendvon (Protium) G'deadense though a most common plant in some parts of the country, and con- stantly used for making fences, I found to be totally unknown here, as the plant producing the balm so highly esteemed and cherished, ' as one of the riches of Arabia.' This circum- stance led me to suspect either, that the so-called plant of India was not the same species as the Abyssinian and Arabian one bearing the same name, or that some other plant produces the Balsam. Which of these was the more probable conjecture I was unable to say, but sus- pected the latter, as Heudelotia, an African genus, (proposed by the authors of the Flora Sene- gambias) but generically quite identical with Balsamodendvon, though a common shrub in Senegal is not mentioned as affording Balsam. This question has been at length settled by Dr. Arnott, who has ascertained that the Indian and Arabian plants are not identical. Then the question now presents itself, is it desirable that we should attempt to introduce both the Myrrh and Balsam of Gilead plants since both are natives of the same tracts of country, and both afford produce of great commercial value ?
Remarks on Genera and Species. My recent collections have furnished me with what I consider a new species of Semecarpus and one of Buchanania, besides specimens of a plant re- ferable to neither, nor to Holigavna, to which last however, in some respects, it appears allied. As I have not seen the flowers, and the fruit of Pegiais imperfectly described I am unable from my specimens to determine whether or not it is a species of that genus. It differs from Holi- gavna, to which it approaches in habit, and in having a fleshy, not bony, perecarp filled with minute cells : in having a superior not inferior fruit, with an erect, not pendulous seed, and in the embryo being situated at the base (next the calyx) of the fruit, not laterally and towards its apex. From Semecavpus it differs in wanting the bony perecarp and the enlarged torus. Under the impression that it may prove a Pegia I have subjoined the character of that genus as given by Meisner from Colebrooke, whose paper in the Linnaean transactions I have not an opportu- nity of consulting for myself.
The new (?) species of Semecavpus may possibly be the variety <S. cunifolius, but if so I cer- tainly think it a distinct species. The leaves are from 15 to 18 inches long, tapering nearly two- thirds of their length towards the base, the remaining third ending in an acute lanceolate point, hence they may be described as cuneato-lanceolate. Panicles of fruit (I have only seen the female plant) axillary and terminal, several congested near the apex of the branch, the lower half of the half grown perecarp embraced by the cup-shaped calyx, whether it afterwards en- larges I am unable to say, the young seed is lateral, pendulous from near the apex. The new species of Buchanania is at once distinguished by its coriaceous, even, glabrous, lanceolate, acute leaves, so accurately resembling those of the Mango, that but for the flowers I should at once have referred it to that genus. The fruit I have not seen. A leaf of the species of Rhus here figured was long ago represented by Burman (Thesauv. Zeylan. table 45) under the name of Filix Zeylanicus Avbovescens, &c. but had never so far as I am aware been taken up by any author until Dr. Arnott and I described it in our Prodromus. I first found it at Cour- tallum and since in Ceylon.
