NAG-KESUR. 129 
with. The seeds are useful for food, also the tender white base of 
the leaves, either raw or boiled. 
Samples of the essential oil distilled in India (there known as 
Keora-ka-utier), also of the fragrant aqueous distillate, have 
occasionally been exhibited in England, but they offered no fair 
criterion of the true perfume, being contaminated with oil of santal- 
wood ; indeed, it is almost impossible to obtain from India any 
essential oils which are not so contaminated, it being the custom 
there to mix santal with all odoriferous substances. The flowers 
are also used in the preparation of a kind of scented catechu paste, 
much esteemed by Hindu ladies for toilet purposes. 
Considering the immense tracts of country in various parts of 
the tropics over which this valuable tree is distributed, also that it 
grows rapidly without any care, it is surprising that the essence of 
its flowers should not have been introduced into European 
commerce *, 
Nac-Kesur. 
Another essential oil which has been overlooked commercially, 
although a specimen of it was exhibited in London thirty years 
ago, is that known in India as Nag-Kesur-ka-utter, distilled from 
the flowers of the Mesua ferreat, a handsome tree of the order 
Guttifere found in the southern Concan and Goa territory, common 
on the mountains of Eastern Bengal, the Eastern Himalaya, and 
the Andaman Islands. It is also under cultivation in India and 
Java for the beauty and fragrance of its white flowers, which are 
from # to 3 inches in diameter, with a large globe of bright gold- 
coloured linear anthers in thecentre. These flowers appear at the 
beginning of the warm season. ‘The anthers of these flowers retain 
their fragrance in the dried state and are sold in the Indian bazaars 
under the name of Nag-Kesur for making satchets and for stuffing 
pillows, also for dyemg silk. Other local names for these dried 
anthers are Ndgacésara, Chdmpéya, and Cdnchana, words which 
have a more or less direct reference to gold{. The tree isin some 
* It is rather remarkable that the flowers, both male and female, of another 
species of Pandanus, the P. fetidus, known in Hindustanee as Keora Kanta, 
possess a highly offensive odour, almost similar to that of the Sterculia fetida. 
+ Roxb. Fl. Ind. ii. p. 605; Hooker and Thomson, Flor. Ind. ii. p. 277 ; 
Wicht, ‘ Icones,’ tab. 118. 
} As. Res. iv. p. 295. 
