Sandal-Wood and its Commercial Importance. 75 



cards, walking-sticks, fly-flaps, and similar pieces of work- 

 manship of it. The ancients seem to have been fully aware of 

 this peculiarity, and the algum or almug trees which the fleets 

 of Hiram and Solomon brought from Ophir, mentioned both in 

 the first book of Kings (x. 11, 12) and the second of Chronicles 

 (ix. 10, 11), never seen before that time in the land of Judah, 

 and employed for making pillars and terraces for the temple and 

 the king's house, and harps and psalteries for the singers, are 

 supposed to have been sandal-trees. A more recent use has been 

 prominently brought before the Indian public by Dr. Hunter, 

 who has shown how admirably it is adapted for wood engravings. 

 Some blocks yielded upwards of 20,000 impressions without 

 being worn out. The dark-coloured wood, five inches in 

 diameter, grown on rocky soil, is the best for the engravers' 

 purpose. This has not been tried in England, as its price was 

 thought to be too high, but on comparing it with box-wood, 

 which sells in England for one penny the square inch, it was 

 found to be cheaper in India than box- wood in England. 



Sandal-wood is the produce of several species of Santalum, 

 the type of the natural order Santalacece, and a genus composed 

 of about twenty members, spread over Asia, Australia, and 

 Polynesia, and best compared in aspect with myrtles. Indeed 

 the Fiji islanders class their species of sandal- wood with the 

 Myrtacece, and give it the same generic name. And they are 

 not far wrong. Both have opposite leaves, furnished with oily 

 dots, flowers similarly arranged, and an inferior ovary. But 

 the genus Santalum, unlike Myrtacece, has no petals, only a 

 tetramerous, seldom pentamerous calyx, which in most species 

 is white, but gradually changes to pink, and ultimately becomes 

 brown. Hence some authors have described these trees as 

 bearing differently coloured flowers. 



The most easterly species is Santalum insulare, found in the 

 Marquesas islands and Tahiti, where it is know as " Eai ;" the 

 southernmost in New Zealand (S. Gunninghamii) , known there 

 as"Mairi;" the northernmost in the Sandwich Islands; and the 

 most westerly (S. album) in the Indian peninsula. All the 

 species delight in dry, rocky localities, hovering about the craters 

 of extinct volcanoes and similar situations, and degenerating 

 in quality, commercially speaking, when growing in moist 

 places. The most barren islands in the South Sea are those 

 yielding the finest sandal ; and as in such islands provisions are 

 scarce, and the natives much less amiable than where food is 

 abundant, we shall see in the sequel how disastrous this pecu- 

 liarity has proved for the white race. 



Santalum album, and a marked variety of inferior quality, 

 known as myrtifolium, grows on the mountains of continental 

 India and the Indian Archipelago, Mysore, Malabar, and 



