202 DR. ROXBURGH ON THE GENUS AQUILARIA. 



exactly with our plant. The inflorescence is only required to confirm their being the 

 same species, or different. Of their belonging to the same genus there can be no 

 doubt *. 



Cavanilles describes and gives a figure of the Garo de Malacca of Lamarck, in his 

 Seventh Dissertation on the Plants of the Class Monadelphia, page 377. t. 224, under 

 the name Aquilaria ovata, which is continued by Willdenow in his edition of the ' Spe- 

 cies Plantarum ' of Linnaeus, vol. ii. p. 629. His description differs little from that of 

 Lamarck, and his figures, so far as they go, agree uncommonly well with our subject. 



I have not ventured to quote Agallochum secundarium (B/umph. Amb. ii. 34. 1. 10), 

 though much inclined to think they are the same. His description and figure of the 

 specimens he received under the name Agallochum malaccense, so far as they go, agree as 

 well with our tree as can be expected, and as well as the generality of the figures in that 

 work do with the plants they are intended to represent. We must, however, suppose the 

 fruit inverted in his plate ; which is the more excusable, as it was not growing on, or 

 naturally attached to the branch the figure is taken from, but tied to it. 



Kaempfer, that most accurate writer, in his ' Amoenitates Exoticse,' page 903, gives a 

 figure and description of the small plant of the Agallochum tree, which with great diffi- 

 culty he obtained from distant mountains, under the name Sinkoo, both of which agree 

 exactly with some young plants of nearly the same size (lately sent from Goolparah by 

 Dr. Buchanan, and from Silhet by Mr. Smith) now growing in this Garden, even to every 

 one of the plants being uniformly divided into two little branches, which with their leaves 

 have the precise appearance of Kaempfer' s figure. 



About the time that Kaempfer made his voyage to Japan, our countryman, Mr. James 

 Cunningham, was employed by the English East India Company on the coast of China, 

 where he must have seen the fruit of this tree, which he describes so well, viz. " turbinate, 

 villous, size of a yellow Myrobalan, with a thick cortex, opening into two, and containing 

 two seeds separated by a partition, with membranaceous appendages (probably what I 

 call the horn), and resting on a five-parted calyx." Until Gaertner's work appeared, this 

 would have been reckoned a full and accurate description of the seed-vessel of my Aqui- 

 laria Agallocha. 



Loureiro's Ophispermum sinense, 'Elora Cochinch.' p. 344, is no doubt another spe- 

 cies of the same genus, and if he, or his editor, had omitted the words " flos terminalis, 

 solitarius," I should have concluded they were the same ; and unreasonable as it may 

 appear, I must also remark, that I think, whoever reads with attention, and compares with 

 this, his account of the nature and production of Aloe- wood in the ' Memorias de Aca- 

 demia Real das Sciencias de Lisboa,' vol. i. p. 402-415, will find a striking similarity in 

 many respects, viz. size and habit of the tree ; smoothness and fibrous texture of the bark, 

 of which paper is made in both countries ; shape, texture and appearance of the leaves ; in 



* Since writing the above, Dr. Roxburgh has received living plants, and perfect capsules with their seeds, of the 

 Garo de Malacca, from Captain Farquhar, the Governor of Malacca. They are not to be distinguished from some 

 plants of the same size, and seed-vessels of his Aquilaria Agallocha, very lately sent to this Garden by Mr. Smith 

 from Silhet, a proof next to positive of their being the same : for positive proof we must wait till the Malacca plants 

 flower, or till specimens in flower, which Captain Farquhar has promised, are procured. 



