244 NOTES AND QUERIES ON ASIATIC COPALS. 



exclusively, for I have reason to believe that it is collected in Assam, 

 Burmah, and the Malay Peninsula. Dr. Wight writes of it thus : — The 

 Canarium stricttim of Roxburgh is known in Malabar under the name 

 of the " black Dammar tree," in contra-distinction to the Valeria, or 

 " white Dammar tree." This tree is rather common in the Alpine forests 

 about Courtalum, in the Tinnevelly district, and is there regularly 

 rented for the sake of the Dammar. This is transparent, and of a deep 

 brownish yellow or amber colour, when held between the eye and the 

 light, but, when adhering to the tree, has a bright shiuing black ap- 

 pearance." 



Notwithstanding this account, a question arose in India some few 

 years since as to the identity of the resin of Canarium strictum and the 

 "Black Dammar" of Travancore, but this was finally settled, chiefly 

 through the investigations of Messrs. E. J. Waring and J. Brown, both 

 resident on the spot. The latter gentleman in his report states that, 

 both the black and white Dammar trees grow in the forests of Trevan- 

 drum, about 1,800 feet above the level of the sea, but the white Dammar 

 tree seems to be more common than the other, perhaps, because the 

 Hill-men getting more dammar from the latter, destroy it more readily. 

 The best specimens of the black Dammar tree which I examined were 

 about two yards in girth, at the height of four feet above the spread of 

 the roots. The trunk is round, straight, and smooth, rising twenty or 

 thirty feet before branching ; the bark generally whitish, dotted with 

 small papillee, peels off in long flakes. The Hill-men to get the dammar, 

 make a great number of vertical cuts into the bark, all round near the 

 base of the trunk ; they then set fire to the tree below the cuts, and, 

 having thus killed it, they leave it for two years before they collect the 

 dammar ; they say that, after one year only, the quantity of dammar is 

 much less than after two years. The tree is killed in the hot season, 

 and the dammar is collected in February or March. When on the 

 Ghauts previously, as -well as this year, we were struck, on looking 

 towards the forests on both the eastern and western slopes, as high as 

 3,000 feet above the level of the sea, by numbers of trees, with bright 

 red, often crimson foliage, contrasting strongly with the various greens 

 around. These crimson trees are black Dammar trees ; the colour due 

 to the young leaves disappears gradually in April. Lieutenant Hawkes 

 also, in reporting on this resin says, " It occurs in large stalactite-shaped 

 masses, of a bright shining black colour, when viewed fiom a distance, 

 but translucent, and of a deep reddish brown when held in thin 

 laminae between the eye and the light. It is perfectly homogeneous, 

 and has a vitreous fracture. Its shape appears to be due to the fact of 

 the balsam having exuded in a very fluid state, and trickled down the 

 trunk of the tree, where it gradually hardened by exposure to the sun ; 

 the fresh resin continuing to flow over that already hardened, gives 

 rise to the stalactitic appearance of the huge lumps of resin, the out- 

 side of which much resemble the guttering of wax, caused by placing 



