202 a ota St. 



burgh wrote: " Wood not unlike mahogany, but more 

 heavy, red, and coarse in the grain. That of the raot 

 beautifully variegated, closer grained, and darker col- 

 oured." 



Ptcrocarpus Wallichii. 

 " dalbcrgioidcs. 



TAVOY RED- WOOD. 



Tavoy red-wood makes handsome furniture, and is used 

 in Tavoy for the same purposes to which gum kino wood 

 is applied at Maulmain. When the wood is steeped in 

 ferruginous mud, it turns jet black, and looks like ebony. 

 The large cylinder knobs, one or two inches in diameter, 

 so often noticed in the ears of Karen women at Tavoy, 

 are made of this wood after the colour has been 

 changed. 



Syndcsmis Tavoyana. 



SHORE A ROBUST A. 



This tree I have never seen, but the Burman books say 

 that Gaudama died in a grove of engyen trees; and the 

 Pali name of engyen is thala, the Sanscrit sal, the name 

 of the Shorea robust a. It not improbably exists in the 

 Provinces, but the trees of the dipterocarpus tribe are so 

 large that, to use the language of Griffith, "the flowers 

 are frequently inaccessible*" On one of the islands near 

 Mergui I found an enormous tree, whose dry fruit, with 

 ihe calyx enlarged into five long wings, proved that it. was 

 at least a species of shorea, and on the Karen mountains 

 I have gathered a similar fruit. The natives say that a 

 part of the petrified wood found in the valley of the Irra- 

 waddy belongs to this tree, and the Burman books that 

 Gaudama was born under on j of them; although the 

 savans state that he was born under a Jonesia. 



Shcrca robusta " is probably the best timber tree in 

 India," according to Captain Munro ; and every specie? 



