BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 285 
| What a beautiful little Palm is Mauritia armata of Humboldt! It 
1s remarkable for growing in /uffs; and as I sit writing I can distinguish 
a cluster of perhaps fifty stems on the opposite shore. It is abundant 
on all the upper Rio Negro; it would fruit beautifully with you. 
RICHARD SPRUCE. 
On the Chemical Composition of Crystals of Borneo Camphor. 
The two following notes should have been given with the account of 
the Borneo Camphor-tree, which appeared at page 200 et seg. of our 
present volume.—Ep. 
: 19, Clapham Rise, April 2, 1852. 
My dear Sir, —I have received the large crystal and the large frag- 
ment from Professor Miller, and will in a few days leave them with 
Dr. Percy for you. Professor Miller has referred to Frankenheim's 
paper, according to which the crystalline form of Borneo Camphor is a 
rhombohedron, which your crystal undoubtedly is not. He has there- 
fore either mistaken the form or taken it upon trust from some one 
else, or has described some other resin under the name of Borneo 
Camphor. The chemical composition given by him is 
10 Carbon = 754-15; 9 Hydrogen — 112:3; 1 Oxygen = 100, 
according to the equivalents given in Rammelsberg's fourth Supplement. 
But whether this is the composition of your resin is uncertain. 
To Sir W. J. Hooker. H. J. Brooks. 
Museum of Practical Geology, April 14, 1852. 
Dear Sir,—I have the pleasure to send you the analysis of the Crys- 
talline Resin sent by you to Dr. Percy. Its composition is as follows :— 
Carbon, 64°72; Hydrogen, 11°87; Oxygen, 2341. 
I have much to regret that the quantity we have remaining, though 
Sufficient to make out a few facts (of little value by themselves), is not 
enough to render a detailed examination possible; and the more so, 
that it appears to be possessed of many properties altogether dissimilar 
to the rest of its class. 
To Sir W. J. Hooker. : T. T. PHILIPPS. 
