- 35 — 



usambarensis, Engl. An oil prepared from its bark at Amani was examined 

 and described many years ago by Schmidt and Weilinger 1 ). The bark 

 has also been tested for tanning-materials, but it is said to contain only 

 about 11% of the latter 2 ). 



It is only now made known by a lengthy quotation in the Bulletin 

 of the Imperial Institute [Vol. 9 (1911), 340] from a Report on the Forests 

 of British East Africa, 1909, that Hutchins himself as long ago as 1909 

 had identified the tree which he describes as "Ibean Camphor tree", as 

 Ocotea usambarensis, Engl. Nothing of this kind was stated in the abstract 

 which served as the basis for the paragraph in our Report of October 1911. 



Schmidt and Weilinger at the time only examined the oil from the 

 bark of the tree, but the Imperial Institute had at its disposal a series 

 of samples of the wood in the shape of sap-wood possessing a faint odour 

 of eucalyptus oil; branches and twigs, which, when newly broken, also 

 gave off the same odour, but in a more marked degree; and, lastly, pollard 

 shoots which had sprung up from the stumps of felled trees after a few 

 years' interval. Each of these three samples, when distilled with steam, 

 yielded a volatile oil possessing the following properties: — 



Oil from 



Sapwood 



Branches 

 and 

 twigs 



Branches 



and twigs 



(Pollard 



shoots) 



Bark; 



Schmidt and 



Weilinger 



Yield 



diso . 



a D 



Sap. v 



Sol. in 80% alcohol 



0,4% 



0,9641 



— 7° 30' 



30,1 



In 1,1 vols. 



0,52% 



0,9681 



— 7°30 f 



30,1 



In 1,1 vols. 



0,14% 

 0,9327 

 — 0°28' 

 13,3 



Insol. even 

 in 10 vols. 



0,15% 

 0,913 bei 20° 

 — 11°12' 

 13,7 



The first two samples of oil were of a bright yellow colour and 

 reminded of eucalyptus oil in their odour. They only contained com- 

 paratively little cineole, and no camphor could be detected in them. The 

 oil from the shoots was of a thinner consistency than the other oils, but 

 resembled them in odour and colour; its more powerful odour led to the 

 conclusion that its cineole-content was greater, but the sample was too 

 small to permit of a cineole-estimation. 



In our Report of October 1910 (p. 27) we discussed a paper by Lommel 

 on the preparation of camphor at Amani. A second paper by the same 

 author 3 ) contains some interesting data on the distillation of dried camphor 



J ) Berl. Berichte 39 (1906), 652; Report April 1906, 68. 



2 ) Der Pflanzer, Ratgeber f. trop. Landwirtschaft 4 (1908), 222. 



3 ) Der Pflanzer, Zeitschr. f. Land- und Forstwirtschaft in Deutsch-Ostafrika 7 (1911), 441. 



3* 



