342 ART INDUSTRY AND RELATED OCCUPATIONS. 



Method of Obtaining the Raw Varnish, and its 

 Properties. 



The material of the industry now treated is an emulsion, the 

 sap of the lac tree or Urushi-no-ki (Rhus vernicifera, D. C), culti- 

 vated in China and Japan. The character of this species of 

 sumach, its variety, and the distribution of its culture in Japan, 

 also its introduction into Germany, have already been discussed on 

 pp. 158-160. It has been especially noted also that the chief 

 districts of lac cultivation He in Northern Hondo, between the 

 37th and 39th parallels.^ 



About three-fourths of all raw lac is obtained north of the 36th 

 parallel. The inland provinces and former Daimio territories of 

 Aidzu, Yonezawa, Yamagata, and Nambu, and lying nearer the 

 Japan Sea, parts of the provinces of Echizen [e.g., Ochiyama, not 

 far from Fukui), Echigo (neighbourhood of Murakami, Nagaoka, 

 and others), Ugo (Akita, in the district of the Tochima-gawa and 

 Noshiro-gawa), and Mutzu {e.g.^ at Hirosaki), are distinguished 

 above all others for their extensive plantations of the lacquer tree. 

 The lac of the young trees in the vicinity of Yoshino in Yamato is 

 particularly estimated. 



The extraction of the sumach lac has much similarity to the 

 manner of obtaining manna from the trunks of Fraxinus Ornus 

 in Sicily.^ It is done by making a horizontal slit upon the tree 

 (girdle cutting), and can be undertaken the whole summer through, 

 from April to the end of October. The lac taken in spring is the 

 least valuable, because it is very watery. The autumn product is 

 much thicker, but also granulous and slow in exudation. The best 

 time for the lac harvest is midsummer, as then the quantity and 

 quality of the material fulfil best the demands. The sap, however, 

 never flows from the incision so easily and plentifully that it can 

 be caught in vessels, as has been several times asserted. 



Lac extraction begins commonly when the tree is from nine to 

 ten years old, and only in exceptional cases four to five years 



^ I add to the foregoing only this, that the tree in the Botanical Garden at 

 Frankfort-on-the-Maine, nine years' old, at the end of its last vegetation-period, 

 had reached a height of 6\ meters and a trunk-circumference of 48 cm., but as 

 yet has never blossomed. On the other hand 19 smaller specimens, among 

 which only one female tree was found, blossomed in June last year. Owing to 

 the unfavourable weather of the autumn, their abundant fruits did not become 

 fully ripe, but attained their full size and had deposited fat in the mesocarp. 



Professor Wallach did me the kindness to allow his pupil, W. Sundheim, in 

 the chemical laboratory of the University of Bonn, to undertake the extraction 

 and estimate of the gravity of the fruit. The result was as follows : From 

 100 fruits dried in the open air, and 6*151 grammes in weight, there was ex- 

 tracted of fat, o'6o625 grammes ; shell (epidermis and mesocarp), 2*36 grammes ; 

 kernel (putamen and embryo), 4"i5 grammes. The fat formed 2937 per cent, 

 of the weight of the shell, and 10*23 P^^ cent, of the weight of the entire fruit. 

 The colouring matter extracted is not brought into the calculation. 



^ See Fliickiger, " Pharmakognosie," 2 Au^., p. 21. 



