BOTANY. 1515 



consignment had been made by parties in Maulmain, to 

 houses in London, of gum kino to the amount of a thou- 

 sand pounds. 



It was brought to Maulmain by an English merchant 

 from the Shan States, and stated by him, as our Commis- 

 sioner at the time informed me, to be the production of 

 the pa-douk, the same tree as the one in Maulmain thus 

 denominated by the Burmans. Several years before, I 

 had directed attention to this tree as producing an astrin- 

 gent gum resembling gum kino, bv.i the medical officer, to 

 whom I submitted specimens, said it was "a kind of dragon's 

 blood." However, after Dr. Morton came to the Provinces, 

 he tried it in his practice, and found it, in its medicinal vir- 

 tues, identical with the gum kino ot the druggists.. 



The next inquiry that arises is, for the genus and species 

 of the pa-douk. When I first came to the Coast, all the 

 English residents of my acquaintance called it " Bur man 

 senna," and the surgeon of the station told me that 

 he believed it was a species of senna. Dr. Malcom, 

 in his Travels, writes : " Pa-douk, or Mahogany, (Swic- 

 tenia Mahogani) is plenty in the upper provinces, es- 

 pecially round Ava, found occasionally in Pegu." In a 

 native Pali dictionary, found in the Burmese monasteries, 

 pa-douk stands as the definition of pr.-ta-tha-la, and the 

 corresponding Sanscrit word in Wilson's dictionary, is 

 defined pentaptera; but the pa-douk does not belong to 

 that genus. In Pid<lington's Index, however, pectshala 

 stands as the Hindee name, and in Voigt's Catalogue, 

 peef-sal as the Bengalee name of Pterocarpus marsupium ; 

 and this brings us nearer the truth, for pa-douk is a name 

 common to two different species of pterocarpus, but which 

 look so much alike that they are usually regarded as one 

 species. 



One has " long, waving branches, with their extremi- 

 ties generally much drooping, racemes axillary, flowers 

 numerous, deep orange yellow, and very fragrant, fila- 

 ments ten [often] united into two equal distinct bodies 

 office each ; stile rather shorter than the stamina; and 

 stigma acute;" which is the description of P. indicus : 

 but on full examination I think it is the species 



