126 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
ment. The Naudér or Nacesar of Assam and Bengal, on the 
other hand, is an evergreen tree, with beautiful foliage and 
fragrant white flowers. Though its true home is in eastern 
Bengal and Assam, it extends far southwards into Burma, where 
it is known as Gancaw, and venerated as a semi-sacred tree. 
As it has been foretold in the Buddhistic sacred writings that the 
sixth and next Buddh will make his appearance under the 
shadow of a Gangaw-tree (as the fifth and last Gaudama 
attained the supreme knowledge of the Law while reclining 
under the sacred Banyan), it is to be found planted near 
monasteries all over the country, ready for the great event, 
should any of the monks happen to be the embryo Buddh. 
The dark-red and very hard and heavy wood is an exceedingly 
strong and endurable kind of timber; and it is only, as in the 
case of Anjan, its great weight, and its extreme hardness, 
and the difficulty of converting it with native tools, that 
accounts for its comparatively small use. It takes a fine 
polish and, having a beautiful dark grain, is suitable for 
high-class furniture and decorative purposes in Britain, much 
in the same way as the PapauK (fterocarpus indicus) of the 
Andaman Islands—which, by the way is also obtainable of 
finer colour, texture, and dimensions in some of the deciduous 
forests of Burma (Toungoo district). 
Besides the valuable kinds above described, the MAHWA-TREE 
(Bassia latifolia), growing scattered throughout the deciduous 
forests of Central India, and extending thence south-westwards 
to Kanara, and northwards to Oudh and Kumaon, and also 
occurring in Upper Burma, is one of the most important trees in 
the districts to which it is indigenous. Its value depends less, 
however, on the excellence of its hard, smooth, durable, red 
wood than on the edible qualities of the sweet, fleshy leaves of 
the corolla of its flowers, which, appearing in the hot season 
during May and June, form an important article of food through- 
out the forest districts where this tree occurs. The corollas are 
eaten either raw or cooked; they are used for making sugar; 
and a coarse and highly-intoxicating spirit is distilled from them, 
the odour of which is so strong and so unpleasant as to be 
noticeable at a long distance from the still. The average yield 
of corollas from a mature tree is about 200 lbs., which sell for 
about half-a-crown when collected. When eaten, they are mixed 
with other food, or with seeds and leaves of other plants, and 
