620 PROFESSOR BAYLEY BALFOUR ON THE 
are not of the same character, nor are they derived from the same, or in all 
cases from allied plants. 
We may dismiss here the West Indian and the Mexican resins with the 
remark that the former is the exudation of a leguminous plant,—Pterocarpus 
Draco, Linn.,—and is, according to FLUckIGER and Hanbury, of the nature of 
kino, whilst the latter is got from the euphorbiaceous Croton Draco, Schlecht. 
I have not been able to obtain specimens of the resins of these. 
An East Indian resin is at the present day the most common commercial 
resin of dragon’s blood. It is procured from the fruits of a rotang palm, 
Calamus Draco, Willd. The resin which exudes on the fruits is separated 
by beating these in a sac, and then sifting out the fruit scales and other 
refuse. The resin is next softened by exposure to the sun, or warming in a 
vessel plunged in hot water, and then moulded into sticks or balls, which 
are wrapped in a piece of palm leaf. An inferior kind is obtained by boiling 
the pounded fruits. Two kinds are exported, “ Reed” and “ Lump,” of which 
the former is the finer.* 
Another East Indian plant, one of the Leguminose—Lcastaphyllum 
Monetaria—found in Surinam, is said to yield a resin like dragon’s blood, but 
of it I know nothing. . a 
The dragon’s blood resins from Arabia, Africa, Socotra, and the Canary 
Islands are furnished by spécies of the liliaceous genus Draceena ; but although 
it is of these resins that we have the earliest records, yet the specific source of 
the resin, with the exception of that from the Canary Islands, has until quite a 
recent date remained unknown, The productive species are branching trees, 
with large trunks, and form a very marked section of the genus. 
The Canary Island tree, Dracwna Draco, Linn., has been long known, and 
frequently and fully described. The large Orotava plant was 60 feet in height 
and 15 feet in diameter when it was destroyed by a hurricane in 1867. The 
resin is apparently not largely exported at the present time, but there is 
evidence that it was formerly an article of much trade, besides being used in 
early times by the Guanchos for the purposes of embalming. 
Amongst the botanical results of Miss TINNr’s expedition to Bahr-el- 
Ghazal river and its affluents in Nubia, was the discovery in the vicinity of 
Suakim of a tree about 24 feet high, which yields a dragon’s blood. Korscuy 
and Pryritscu t describe the plant under the name Dracena Ombet,—“ ombet” 
meaning Mother of Earth, being the native name for it. A figure of the plant 
is given in a landscape heading to the letterpress. Both description and figure 
leave much to be desired. Fortunately Scuwe1nrurtH, in his Abyssinian tour, 
found the same plant at an elevation of 2000 feet, growing over a few square 
* See Pharmacographia, FuickicEr and Hansury, 2nd edition (1879), p. 672. 
t Plante Tinneane, p. 47. 
