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BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 



furrowed outside like the testa of a nutmeg. What remained of the 

 albumen was black and rotten, but appeared to have been ruminated. 

 I send you a scrap in this letter, as I believe no botanist has seen it 

 before, and it is one of the celebrities of Borneo. I had not time to 

 make a drawing while fresh, and from the dried plant you can easily 

 get a better one than I could make when you receive the specimens. 

 The wood is perhaps the strongest in the world. I tested a piece of 

 it, one inch square, and forty-two inches between the supports, and it 

 bore, suspended from the centre, 338 lbs. before it gave way: its de- 

 flection was then about eight inches. I believe this is the greatest 

 strength recorded of any wood. The wood, when fresh cut, is light- 

 brown, but becomes of a deep reddish-black, and finally quite black 

 when old. It is used here by the natives almost universally for boats 

 and houses, though very heavy. It is now becoming scarce, and diffi- 

 cult to procure in large pieces, except from the interior of the country, 

 where it must exist in vast forests. The trees are large and majestic, 

 the trunk very straight, and the bark thin and scaly. This wood 

 appears to be almost indestructible. A sort of paling or stockade 

 which surrounds the Sultan's house at Martapora, is known by un- 

 doubted evidence to have been standing a hundred and thirty years, 

 without even the protection of paint, and it shows no signs of decay ; 

 and the old Kraton, or palace, is still older. It is built entirely of 

 Oulin, and the enormous posts and beams are all over elaborately 

 carved, and have been formerly painted and gilt in arabesque ; but this 

 magnificent room is now neglected and disused, except on great occa- 

 sions. All over the padangs or great grassy plains of this country the 

 Oulin clumps stand up, white and ghastly mementos of the vast forests 

 which once covered the whole district, and of which the oldest natives 

 have no recollection ; the stumps were there when they were young, 

 and to all appearance will be there for a hundred years longer. In 

 many cases they are hollow, and then a large tree has frequently grown 

 in the centre, and by its gradual increase split the Oulin into three or 

 four pieces. In some places the padaugs are covered with trees, which 

 thus look as if they grew in huge flower-pots, and whose roots squeeze 

 themselves in strange shapes through the cracks of their ancient pedes- 

 tals, which have preserved them when young from the fires which, in 

 the dry season, sweep roaring and crackling across the padangs, de- 

 stroying every living leaf. 



