NATURAL PAPER 



Gradatand 



Prices. 



AQUILARIA 

 AOALLOCHA 



Agar 



difficult t.. <1. i(l.- uh.it is the predisposing cause of the secretion of this oleo- 



remn, hut tin- majority of forest officers are of opinion that it is usually, if not 



-, lounil where some former injury has been received. The old tradition 



fiifiitioned in th.- Ain i AUxii-i (Bloclimann. transl., 80), that the branches were 



|M|I|>, (1 , ,ii mid hurieil iii the ground in order to cause the formation of the resin, 



II completely exploded by modern research. 



I'he Dituu occurs in pieces of extremely irregular shape and size. The 

 largest rarely exceeds a pound in weight, while some of excellent quality is met 

 with as small chips or splinters. The lighter portion of wood called doom is the 

 i- i i.-. i pest and is sold for Ks. 1 to Rs. 3 a seer, the black or brownish-black is the 

 true agar of commerce and is called ghurkee ; it is worth from Rs. 16 to Rs. 20 

 a seer. The Ain-i-Akbari (I.e. 81) gives full directions for the distillate called. 



* lA, used in perfumery. 



1 i "in ancient times agar has been used all over the East on account of its per- Medicine. 

 fume mul its supposed MEDICINAL qualities. It is alluded to repeatedly in The Bower 

 Manuscript as aguru (Hoernle, transl., 21, 23, 104), which may be described 

 as a medical treatise which dates from the 5th century. It is to-day employed 

 largely in China, and utilised as incense and in the manufacture of joss-sticks. It 

 is met with in most Eastern bazars, including those in Syria, where Hanbury 

 found it for sale. In Sylhet a certain quantity is collected each year for the sake 

 of extracting from it a sort of essential oil (agar-attar), which is considered as Ayar-attar. 

 costly as attar of roses. In Bombay agar-batis or a^or-lights are made of various Agar-batit. 

 sweet-smelling substances of which aloes-wood is the chief ingredient. These 

 sticks are burned as incense or are used to perfume apartments. Marco Polo, 

 Garcia de Orta, Varthema, Barbosa, Linschoten, Herbert and many other of the 

 early European visitors to India allude to Eagle- or Calambac-wood, although in 

 some cases it may be questionable whether it is the present plant. They one 

 and all attribute, however, the finest quality to Cambodia, or to some part of the 

 Malay Peninsula or Archipelago. Prebble, speaking of the present traffic, says Present Traffic. 

 the best quality, imported into Bombay, comes from Bankok. He mentions two 

 well-known trade qualities, the gagali (A. Atmiiochn) and the mawardi (.*. 

 niiit,iwnMi). Do these correspond to the gharki and mandali of the early 

 writers ? To A. ><,! ,-,,i-< has very possibly to be referred the jangli agar 

 and the Singapore agar of the Bombay market. But the Sylhet agar holds an 

 honourable position. Various qualities are mentioned by most of the early writers Sylbet Agar. 

 such as Abul Fazl (in the Ain-i-Akbari, I.e.). Roxburgh wrote a long and highly 

 instructive article on A.. i,,uii.,,i><, . which was followed by an article by 

 Henry Thomas Colebrook. These two papers give practically all that is known 

 of the Indian Agar-wood ( Trans. Linn. Soc., 1855, xxi., 199-206, pi. 21). Rumphius 

 some time previously described two kinds of true and two kinds of false aloes-wood. 

 The first of the true forms he says was the kilam of the Chinese and calambas of 

 the Malays, and was obtained from Cambodia; the second true form was the garo 

 or garu (a word that may be accepted as the Malayan variant of agaru) both are 

 possibly varieties of -i. nminr, *. According to the authors of the Pharma- 

 cographia Indica the best MEDICINAL quality is the gharki ud from Sylhet. 

 \Cf. Paulus ^gineta (Adams, transl.), iii., 18; Pyrard, Voy. E. 2nd., 1601 (ed. 

 Hakl. Soc.), i., 335; ii., 360 ; Clusiua, Hist. Exot. PL, 1605, 172 ; Barbosa, Coasts 

 S7. Africa and Malabar (ed. Hakl. Soc.), 204 ; Herbert, Travels, 1677, 333 ; Milburn, 

 Or. Comm., 1813, ii., 312-3; Birdwood and Foster, E.I.C. First Letter Book, 

 #7, 340, 406, 410, 427-8; Buchanan-Hamilton, Comment, on Herb. Amb., 

 i Mem. Wern. Soc., 1832, vi., 276 ; Taylor, Topog. Stat. Dacca, 250 ; Hooker, 

 Htm. Journ. (ed. 1854), ii., 328 ; Moeller, in Pharm. Post., 1896. 1898 ; Holmes, 

 Mus. Rept., Pharm. Soc. Ot. Brit., 1895-1902, 39-45]. The last-mentioned 

 work is an exceedingly instructive review of Moeller's results, and republishes 

 his illustrations of microscopic sections of the various forms of the wood, etc., etc. 



r. E. A. Gait, who was director of Land Records and Agriculture, Assam, Natural Paper. 



94, drew attention to the fact that the bark of A<iniiufiu Auiiiiwim affords 

 a NATURAL PAPER that appears to have been used for ages by the aboriginal 

 tribes of Assam, like the birch bark of the Aryans. The information then col- 

 lected will be found in a paper on the Abstract of Contents of one of the Ahum 

 Puthis (Journ. As. Soc., Beng., 1894, Ixiii., pt. i., No. 2), from which the 

 blowing may be given : " Although the bark was widely used as a writing- 

 material throughout Assam, prior to the introduction of paper, its employment 

 a such seems to have escaped notice. Brahmins and Goshais in the habit of 

 performing religious ceremonies in the houses of their disciples or in the presence 



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