The parenchyme-cells outside the shell contain chlorophyll and tannin; the latter is in transparent, colourless, sharp-edged masses, insoluble in benzol, but dissolving slowly in water, quickly in alcohol. Thin slices soaked in glycerin, appear after some time covered with beautiful crystals of gallic acid. The thick-walled cells (stone-cells) and the neighbouring striated cells, are rich in octahedra of calcium oxalate. The tissue of the gall situated within the shell of thick-walled cells, contains starch in large, compressed, mostly spherical granules; also isolated masses of brown resin. Besides these, there appears to be in this part of the tissue an albuminoid compound.

Chemical Composition-The rough taste of galls is due to their chief constituent, Tannic or Gallo-tannic Acid, the type of a numerous family of substances to which vegetables owe their astringent properties. Tannic matter was long supposed to be of one kind, namely that found in the oak gall, but the researches of later years have proved the tannin of different plants to possess distinctive characters: hence the term gallo-tannic acid to distinguish that of galls, from which it is principally derived. It was however shown by Stenhouse as far back as the year 1843, again in 1861, as well as by still more recent unpublished experiments, that the tannic acid found in Sicilian sumach, the leaves of Rhus Coriaria L., is identical with that of oak galls. Löwe in 1873 came to the same conclusion. The best oak galls yield of this acid, from 60 to 70 per cent.

Gallic Acid is also contained in galls ready-formed to the extent of about 3 per cent. Free sugar, resin, protein-substances, have also been found. Neither gum nor dextrin is present.

Commerce-The introduction into dyeing of new chemical substances, and the increased employment of sumach and myrobalans, have caused the trade in nutgalls to decline considerably during the last few years. The province of Aleppo which used to export annually 10,000 to 12,000 quintals, exported in 1871 only 3000 quintals. A staple market for the galls which are collected in the mountains of Kurdistan is Diarbekir, whence they are sent to Trebizond for shipment. Galls are also shipped in some quantity at Bussorah, Bagdad, Bushire, and Smyrna.

There were imported into the United Kingdom from ports of Turkey and Persia during 1872, 6349 cwt. of galls, valued at £18,581.

Uses-Oak galls in their crude state are seldom used in medicine unless it be externally; but the tannic and gallic acids extracted from them, are often administered.

Other kinds of Gall.

Chinese or Japanese Galls-The plant which bears this important kind of gall, is Rhus semialata Murray (Rh. Bucki-amela Roxb.), a small tree of the order Anacardiacea, common in Northern India, China and Japan. The galls began to be imported into Europe about 1724, and are noticed by Geoffroy as Oreilles des Indes, but they seem to have

3

1 Gmelin, Chemistry, xv. (1862) 449; Schorlemmer, Chemistry of the Carbon Compounds, 1874. 463.

* Consul Skene-Reports of H.M. Consuls, No. 1. 1872. 270.

3 Mém. de l'Académie royale des Sciences, Paris, 1724. 324.

soon disappeared from the market. Pereira directed attention to them in 1844, since which time they have formed a regular and abundant article of import both from China and Japan. At present the supplies arrive chiefly from Hankow, from which great trading city, the export in 1872, was no less than 30,949 peculs, equal to 36,844 cwt.1 The quantity imported from China into the United Kingdom in 1872, was 8621 cwt., valued at £20,098.

Chinese galls are vesicular protuberances formed on the leafstalks and branches of the above-mentioned tree, by the puncture of an insect, identified and figured by Doubleday 2 as a species of Aphis, and subsequently named provisionally by Jacob Bell, A. Chinensis. We have no account by any competent observer of their growth and collection; and as to their development, we can only imagine it from the analogous productions seen in Europe. According to Doubleday, it is probable that the female aphis punctures the upper surface of a leaf (more probably leafstalk), the result of the wound being the growth of a hollow expansion in the vegetable tissue. Of this cavity the creature takes possession and brings forth a progeny which lives by puncturing the inner surface of their home, thus much increasing the tendency to a morbid expansion of the soft growing tissue in an outward direction. Meanwhile the neck of the sac-like gall thickens, the aperture contracts. and finally closes, imprisoning all the inmates. Here they live and

multiply until, as in the case of the pistacia gall of Europe, the sac ruptures and allows of their escape. This, we may imagine, takes place at the period when, after some generations all wingless and perhaps all female (for the female aphis produces for several generations without impregnation), a winged generation is brought forth of both sexes. may then fly to other spots, and deposit eggs for a further propagation of their race.

4

These

The galls are light and hollow, varying in length from 1 to 24 inches, and of extremely diverse and irregular form. The simplest are somewhat egg-shaped, the smaller end being attached to the leafstalk; but the form is rarely so regular, and more often the body of the gall is distorted by numerous knobby or horn-like protuberances or branches; or the gall consists of several lobes uniting in their lower part and gradually attenuated to the point by which the excrescence is attached to the leaf. But though the form is thus variable, the structure of these bodies is very characteristic. They are striated towards the base, and completely covered on other parts with a thick, velvety, grey down, which rubbed off on the prominences, displays the reddish brown colour of the shell itself. The latter is to of an inch in thickness, translucent and horny, but brittle with a smooth and shining fracture. It is rather smoother on the inner surface and of lighter colour than on the outer. The galls when broken are generally found to contain a white, downylooking substance, together with the minute, dried-up bodies of the insect.

1 Returns of Trade at the Treaty Ports of China for 1872. 154.-In the China trade returns, the drug is always miscalled "Nut Galls" or "Gallnuts."

2 Pharm. Journ. vii. (1848) 310.

3 Ibid. x. (1851) 128.

4 We have once met with galls imported from Shanghai which differed from ordinary

a

Chinese galls in not being horned, but all of an elongated ovoid form, often pointed at the upper end, and having moreover strong cheesy smell. They may be derived from Distylium racemosum S. et Z., though they do not perfectly accord with the depressed pear-shaped forms figured by Siebold and Zuccarini (Flora Japonica, tab. 94).

Chinese galls contain about 70 per cent. of a tannic acid which Stenhouse1 regards as identical with that derived from oak galls. It is worthy of note that those who manufacture pyrogallol for photographic purposes, declare that Chinese galls and common galls do not yield that substance in precisely the same form. Chinese galls are employed, chiefly in Germany, for the manufacture of tannic and gallic acids.

Pistacia Galls-The genus Pistacia, which belongs to the same order as Rhus, is very liable to the attacks of Aphis, which produce upon its leaves and branches, excrescences of exactly the saine nature as Chinese galls. In the south of Europe, horn-like follicles, often several inches long,2 are frequently met with on the branches of Pistacia Terebinthus; while much smaller excrescences of the same nature but of different shape, occur on the leaves of P. Lentiscus. Another growth of the same character, constitutes the small and very astringent galls known in the Indian bazaars by the names of Bazghanj and Gule-pistah, the latter signifying flower of pistachio; they have been termed in Europe, Bokhara Galls. They were imported by sea into Bombay in the year 1872-73, to the extent of 184 cwt., chiefly from Sind;3 and are also carried into North-western India by way of Peshawar and by the Bolán Pass. Occasionally a package finds its way into a London drug sale.

Tamarisk Galls-These are roundish knotty excrescences of the size of a pea up to an inch in diameter, found in North-western India on the branches of Tamarix orientalis L., a large, quick-growing tree, common on saline soils. The galls are used in India in the place of oak galls, and are mentioned as "non-officinal" in the Pharmacopoeia of India 1867. We are not aware that they have been the subject of any particular chemical research.

SANTALACEÆ.

LIGNUM SANTALI.

Lignum Santalinum album vel citrinum; Sandal Wood; F. Bois de Santal citrin; G. Weisses oder Gelbes Sandelholz.

Botanical Origin-Santalum album L., a small tree, 20 to 30 feet high, with a trunk 18 to 36 inches in girth, native of the mountainous parts of the Indian peninsula, but especially of Mysore and parts of Coimbatore and North Canara, in the Madras Presidency; it grows in dry and open places, often in hedge-rows, not in forests. The same tree is also found in the islands of the Eastern Archipelago, notably of Sumba (otherwise called Chandana or Sandal-wood Island) and Timur.

In later times, sandal wood has been extensively collected in the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands, where its existence was first pointed out about the year 1778, from Santalum Freycinetianum Gaud. and S. pyrularium A. Gray; in the Viti or Fiji Islands from S. Yasi Seem.; in New Caledonia from S. Austro-caledonicum, Vieill. ;5 and in Western Australia

1 Proceedings of the Royal Society, xi. (1862) 402.

2 For a figure, see Pharm. Journ. iii. (1844) 387.

3 From the Returns quoted at p. 297,

note 5.

4 Seemann, Flora Vitiensis, 1865-73. 210-215.

5 Soubeiran in Journ. de Pharm. xi. (1870) 243.

from Fusanus spicatus Br. (Santalum spicatum DC., S. cygnorum Miq.)1 In India, the sandal-wood tree is protected by Government and is the In other countries it has been left to source of a profitable commerce. itself, and has usually been extirpated, at least from all accessible places, within a few years of its discovery.

History-Sandal wood, the Sanskrit name for which, Chandana, has passed into many of the languages of India, is mentioned in the Nirukta or writings of Yaska, the oldest Vedic commentary extant, written not later than the 5th century B.C. The wood is also referred to in the ancient Sanskrit epic poems, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, parts of which may be of nearly as early date.

The author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, written about the middle of the 1st century, enumerates sandal wood (Euλa oayaλiva) among the Indian commodities imported into Omana in the Persian Gulf.2 The Tavdáva mentioned towards the middle of the 6th century by Cosmas Indicopleustes as brought to Taprobane (Ceylon) from China and other emporia, was probably the wood under consideration. In Ceylon, its essential oil was used as early as the 9th century in embalming the corpses of the princes.

3

Sandal wood is named by Masudi as one of the costly aromatics of the Eastern Archipelago. In India, it was used in the most sacred buildings, of which a memorable example still exists in the famous gates of Somnath, supposed to be 1000 years old.5

Among European writers, Constantinus Africanus, who flourished at Salerno in the 11th century, was one of the earliest to mention Sandalum." Ebn Serabi, called Serapion the Younger, who lived about the same period, was acquainted with white, yellow, and red sandal wood. All three kinds of sandal wood also occur in a list of drugs 8 in use at Frankfort, circa A.D. 1450; and in the Compendium Aromatariorum of Saladinus, published in 1488, we find mentioned as proper to be kept by the Italian apothecary,-"Sandali trium generum, scilicet albi, rubii et citrini."

Whether the red sandal here coupled with white and yellow, was the inodorous wood of Pterocarpus santalinus, now called Lignum santalinum rubrum or Red Sanders (see p. 175), is extremely doubtful. It may have meant real sandal wood, of which three shades, designated white, red and yellow, are still recognized by the Indian traders.9

1 Whether Santalum lanceolatum Br., a tree found throughout N. and E. Australia and called sandal wood by the colonists, is an object of trade, we know not.

2 Vincent, Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients, ii. (1807) 378.

3 Migne, Patrologia Cursus, series Græca, tom. 88. 446.

4 Les Prairies d'Or, texte et traduction par Barbier de Meynard et Pavet de Courteille, i. (1861) 222.

5 They are 11 feet high and 9 feet wide, and richly carved out of sandal wood; they were constructed for the temple of Somnath in Guzerat, once esteemed the holiest temple in India. On its destruction in A.D. 1025, the gates were carried off to Ghuzni in Afghanistan, where they remained until the capture of that city by the English in 1842,

when they were taken back to India. They are now preserved in the citadel of Agra. For a representation of the gates, see Archaologia, xxx. (1844) pl. 14.

6 Opera, Basil. 1536–39, Lib. de Gradibus, 369.

7 Liber Serapionis aggregatus in medicinis simplicibus, 1473.

8 Flückiger, Die Frankfurter Liste, Halle, 1873. 11.

9 Thus Milburn in his Oriental Commerce (1813), says ". . the deeper the colour, the higher is the perfume; and hence the merchants sometimes divide sandal into red, yellow, and white, but these are all different shades of the same colour and do not arise from any difference in the species of the tree." (i. 291.)

On the other hand we learn from Barbosa,1 that about 1511, white and yellow sandal wood were worth at Calicut on the Malabar Coast, from eight to ten times as much as the red, which would show that in his day, the red was not a mere variety of the other two but something far cheaper, like the Red Sanders Wood of modern commerce.

In 1635, the subsidy levied on sandal wood imported into England was 1s. per b. on the white, and 2s. per lb. on the yellow.2

The first figure and satisfactory description of Santalum album, occur in the Herbarium Amboinense of Rumphius (ii. tab. 11).

Production-The dry tracts producing this valuable wood, occupy patches of a strip of country lying chiefly in Mysore and Coimbatore, about 250 miles long, north and north-west of the Neilgherry Hills, and having Coorg and Canara between it and the Indian Ocean; also a piece of country further eastward in the districts of Salem and North Arcot, where the tree grows from the sea-level up to an elevation of 3000 feet. In Mysore where sandal wood is most extensively produced, the trees all belong to Government and can only be felled by the proper officers. This privilege was conferred on the East India Company by a treaty with Hyder Ali, made 8 August, 1770, and the monopoly has been maintained to the present day. The Mysore annual exports of sandal wood are about 700 tons, valued at £27,000.3 They are shipped from Mangalore.

A similar monopoly existed in the Madras Presidency until a few years ago, when it was abandoned. But sandal wood is still a source of revenue to the Madras Government which by the systematic management of the Forest Department has of late years been regularly increasing. The quantity of sandal wood felled in the Reserved Forests during the year 1872-73, was returned as 15,329 maunds (5471⁄2 tons).*

The sandal-wood tree, which is indigenous to the regions just mentioned, used to be reproduced by seeds sown spontaneously or by birds; but it is now being raised in regular plantations, the seeds being sown two or three in a hole with a chili (Capsicum) seed, the latter producing a quick-growing seedling which shades the sandal while young. It is probable that the nurse-plant affords sustenance, for it has been lately shown that Santalum is parasitic, its roots attaching themselves by tuber-like processes to those of many other plants; and it is also said that young sandal plants thrive best when grass is allowed to grow up in the seed-beds.

6

The trees attain their prime in 20 to 30 years and have then trunks as much as a foot in diameter. A tree having been felled, the branches are lopped off, and the trunk allowed to lie on the ground for several months, during which time the white ants eat away the greater part of the inodorous sapwood. The trunk is then roughly trimmed, sawn into billets 2 to 2 feet long, and taken to the forest depots. There the wood

1 Ramusio, Navigationi et Viaggi, etc., Venet. 1554. fol. 357 b., Libro di Odoardo Barbosa Portoghese.

2 The Rates of Marchandizes, Lond. 1635. 3 B. H. Baden Powell, Report on the Administration of the Forest Department in the several provinces under the Government of India, 1872-73, Calcutta, 1874. vol. i. 27.

4 Report of the Administration of the Madras Presidency during the year 1872-73, Madras, 1874. 18. 143.

5 Beddome, Flora Sylvatica for Southern India, 1872. 256.

6 Scott in Journ, of Agricult. and Horticult. Soc. of India, Calcutta, vol. ii. part 1 (1871) 287.