SANTALACEÆ.

LIGNUM SANTALI.

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

Botanical Origin-Santalum album1 L., a small tree, 20 to 30 feet high, with a trunk 18 to 35 inches in girth, a 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 Chandane 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, Vieill3; and in Western Australia from Fusanus spicatus Br. (Santalum spicatum DC., S. cygnorum Miq.). The mother plants of Japanese and West Indian sandal wood are not known to us.

In India the sandal-wood tree is protected by Government, and is the source of a profitable commerce. In other countries it has been left to 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 (Eúλa σayaλiva) among the Indian commodities imported into Omana in the Persian Gulf.5

6

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.

1 Fig. in Bentley and Trimen's Medic. Plants, part 18 (1877).

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

3 The natural woods having been nearly exhausted, the tree is now under culture in the island. Catalogue des produits des colonies françaises, Exposition de 1878. p. 332; they state there that the island of Nossi-bé, on the north-western coast of

Madagascar, also supplies some sandal wood.

4 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.

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

6 Migne, Patrologiæ Cursus, series Græca, tom. 88. 446.

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.2

In the 11th century sandal wood was found among the treasures of the Egyptian khalifs, as stated in our article on camphor at page 511.

3

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' 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. 199), is extremely doubtful. may have meant real sandal wood, of which three shades, designated white, red, and yellow, are still recognized by the Indian traders.

It

On the other hand, we learn from Barbosa 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 18. per lb. on the white, and 28. per lb. on the yellow.

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

1I. 222 in the work quoted in the Appendix.

2 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 Archæologia, xxx. (1844) pl. 14.

3

3 Opera, Basil. 1536–39, Lib. de Gradibus,

369.

66

Thus Milburn in his Oriental Commerce (1813) says- the deeper the colour, the higher is the perfume; and hence the merchants sometimes divide sandal intored, 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.)

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

8 The Rates of Marchandizes, Lond. 1635.

monopoly has been maintained to the present day. The Mysore annual exports of sandal wood are about 700 tons, valued at £27,000.1 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 1872-3 was returned as 15,329 maunds (547) tons).2

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 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.

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 is weighed, subjected to a second and more careful trimming, and classified according to quality. In some parts it is customary not to fell but to dig the tree up; in others the root is dug up after the trunk has been cut down,-the root affording valuable wood, which with the chips and sawdust are preserved for distillation, or for burning in the native temples. The sap wood and branches are worthless."

In 1863 a sort of sandal wood afforded by Fusanus spicatus (p. 599) was one of the chief exports of Western Australia, whence it was shipped to China. A trifling payment for permission to cut growing timber of any kind was the only barrier placed on the felling of the trees. The farmers employed their teams during the dull season in bringing to Perth or Guildford the logs of sandal which had been felled and trimmed in the bush; and there was a flourishing trade so long as trees of a fair size could be obtained within 100 or even 150 miles of the towns, where the commodity was worth £6 to £6 10s. per ton. But the ill-regulated and improvident destruction of the trees in the more easily accessible districts has so reduced their numbers that the trade

1 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.

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

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

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

5 Elliot, Experiences of a Planter in the Jungles of Mysore, ii. (1871) 237; also verbal information communicated by Capt. Campbell Walker, Deputy Conservator of Forests, Madras.

in that part of Australia soon came to an end.' Australian sandal wood appears however to be still an article of commerce, if one may draw such an inference from the fact that 47,904 cwt. of sandal wood were imported into Singapore from Australia in the year 1872. It was mostly re-shipped to China.2

Description Sandal wood is not much known in English commerce, and is by no means always to be found even in London. That which we have examined, and which we believe was Indian, was in cylindrical logs, mostly about 6 inches in diameter (the largest 8 inches-smallest 3 inches) and 3 to 4 feet long, extremely ponderous; the bark had been removed. A transverse section of sandal wood exhibits it of a pale brown, marked with rather darker concentric zones and (when seen under a lens) numerous open pores. The tissue is traversed by medullary rays, also perceptible by the aid of a lens. The wood splits easily, emitting when comminuted an agreeable odour which is remarkably persistent; it has a strongish aromatic taste.

The varieties of sandal wood are not classified by the few persons who deal in the article in London, and we are unable to point out characters by which they may be distinguished. In the price-currents of commercial houses in China three sorts of sandal wood are enumerated, namely, South Sea Island, Timor, and Malabar; the last fetches three or four times as high a price as either of the others. Even the Indian sandal wood may vary in an important manner. Beddome,3 conservator of forests in Madras, and an excellent observer, remarks that the finest sandal wood is that which has grown slowly on rocky, dry and poor land; and that the trees found in a rich alluvial soil, though of very fine growth, produce no heart-wood and are consequently valueless. A variety of the tree with more lanceolate leaves (var. B myrtifolium DC.), native of the eastern mountains of the Madras Presidency, affords a sandal wood which is nearly inodorous.

Microscopic Structure-The woody rays or wedges show a breadth varying from 35 to 420 mkm., the primary being frequently divided by secondary medullary rays. These latter rays consist of one, often of two, rows of cells of the usual form. The woody tissue which they enclose is chiefly made up of small ligneous fibres with pointed ends, some larger parenchymatous cells, and thick-walled vessels. The resin and essential oil reside chiefly in the medullary rays, as shown by the darker colour of these latter.

Chemical Composition-The most important constituent is the essential oil, which the wood yields to the extent of from 2 to 5 per cent. In India, with imperfect stills, 25 per cent. of the oil are obtained; the roots yield the largest amount and the finest quality of it. It is a light yellow, thick liquid, possessing the characteristic odour of sandal; that which we examined had sp. gr. of 0.963. We did not succeed in finding a fixed boiling point of the oil; it began to boil at 214° C., but

1 Millett, An Australian Parsonage, Lond., 1872, 43. 95. 382.

2 Straits Settlements Blue Book for 1872, Singapore, 1873. 298. 347.-It is possible that the sandal wood in question may have been the produce of the South Sea Islands, shipped from an Australian port.

3 Op. cit.

Information obligingly communicated by Messrs. Schimmel and Co., Leipzig (1878).

Dr. Bidie, in Pharmacopoeia of India, 1868, p. 461.

the temperature quickly rose to 255°, the oil acquiring a darker hue. Oil of sandal wood varies much in the strength and character of its aroma, according to the sort of wood from which it is produced.

The oil as largely prepared by Messrs. Schimmel & Co., in a column 100 millimetres long, deviates the plane of polarization 18.6° to the left. Oil of Venezuela sandal wood, from the same distillers, examined in the same manner, deviates 6°75 to the right.

From the wood, treated with boiling alcohol, we obtained about 7 per cent. of a blackish extract, from which a tannate was precipitated by alcoholic solution of acetate of lead. Decomposed by sulphuretted hydrogen, the tannate yielded a tannic acid having but little colour, and striking a greenish hue with a ferric salt. The extract also contained a dark resin.

Commerce-The greatest trade in sandal wood is in China, which country in the year 1866 imported at the fourteen treaty ports then open 87,321 peculs, equivalent to 5,197 tons; of this vast quantity the city of Hankow on the river Yangtsze, received no less than 61,414 peculs, or more than seven times as much as any other port. The imports into Hankow have recently been much smaller, namely, 14,989 peculs in 1871 and 12,798 peculs in 1872.2 On the other hand, Shanghai lying near the mouth of the same great river, imported in 1872, 59,485 peculs of sandal wood, the estimated value of which was about £100,000. In 1877 the imports of all China were 72,934 peculs.

A considerable trade in sandal wood is done in Bombay, the quantity imported thither annually being about 650 tons, and the annual export

about 400 tons.3

Oil of sandal wood is largely manfactured on the ghats between Mangalore and Mysore, where fuel for the stills is abundant. Official returns represent the quantity of the oil imported into Bombay in the year 1872-73 as 10,348 lbs., value £8,374; 4,500 lbs. were re-exported by sea.

Uses The essential oil has of late been prescribed as a substitute for copaiba, otherwise sandal wood has hardly any uses in modern European medicine. It is employed as a perfume and for the fabrication of small articles of ornament. Among the natives of India it is largely consumed in the celebration of sepulchral rites, wealthy Hindus showing their respect for a departed relative by adding sticks of sandal wood to the funereal pile. The powder of the wood made into a paste with water is used for making the caste mark, and also for medicinal purposes. The consumption of sandal wood in China appears to be principally for the incense used in the temples.

1 Reports on Trade at the ports in China open to foreign trade for 1866, published by order of the Inspector-General of Customs, Shanghai, 1867. 120. 121.-One pecul 1334fb.

=

2 Commercial Reports of H.M. Consuls in

China for 1871 (p. 50) and 1872 (pp. 62. 159).

3 From the official document quoted at p. 601, note 1.

See p. 333, note 3.