170 MEDICINAL PLANTS. 



lary, and furnished with round antherae : the geruien is roundish, 

 placed above the insertion of (he calyx, and the style is trifid, fili- 

 form, twisted in a spiral manner, and terminated by simple stigmata: 

 the fruit is somewhat larger than that of a filbert, membranous, 

 round, one-celled, covered with regular inverted, obtuse scales, and 

 contains a red resinous pulp, which soon becomes dry : the seed is 

 round and fleshy. It is a native of the East Indies, where it com- 

 monly grows in woods near rivers, and has long supplied Europe 

 with walking -canes, which have usually been imported by the 

 Dutch. 



According to Linnaeus there are several varieties of the calamus 

 rotang, which he has founded upon the different figures of this tree 

 given by Rumphius; but whether these are varieties only, or distinct 

 species, it is not for us to determine. The specimens of the calamus 

 in the herbariums of Sir Joseph Banks and Dr. Smith, differ con- 

 siderably in their foliage ; so that different species of this obscure 

 genus will probably in future be sytematically defined ; our business 

 however has only been to select for delineation that which accorded 

 best with the descriptions of it given by Rumphius and Kaempfer, 

 conformably to the synonyms to which we have referred. 



Several trees are known to abound with a red resinous juice, 

 which is obtained by wounding the bark, and called dragon's blood, 

 as the pterocarpus draco or pterocarpus officinalis of Jacquin, the 

 dracaena draco, the dalbergia monetaria, and the pterocarpus son- 

 tolinus. Besides these, many of the Indian red woods, while grow- 

 ing, pour forth through the fissures of the bark a blood-coloured 

 juice, forming a resinous concretion, to which the name dragon's 

 blood has been affixed *. This drug, however, is chiefly obtained 

 from the fruit of the calamus rotang, and is procured at the Mo- 

 lucca Islands, Java, and other parts of the East Indies, according 

 to Kaempfer, by exposing this fruit to the steam of boiling water, 



* As some of the crotons, (vide Linn. Supp. p. 319) and other trees noticed 

 by Cranz, De duabus draconis arboribus, ad, p. 13. An exudation similar to the 

 sanguis draconis produced from a tree at Botany Bay, was discovered by Sir 

 Joseph Banks and Dr. Solander. Vide Hawkesworth's Collection of Voyages, 

 vol. iii p. 498 and 505. But the substance now known at New South Wales 

 by the name of red gum, is perfectly soluble in water; the yellow gum of this 

 place is, however, in its chemical and medicinal qualities, not very different 

 from sanguis draconis, and has been successfully employed as an astringent by 

 Dr. Blane. See Phillips's Voyage to New South Wales, p. 59. 



