2G6 COACH-VARNISH VERSUS DISCOVERY. 



Dammer of Singapore, and some of the most im- 

 portant gum resins of Australia, they may be 

 regarded as semi-fossils, the produce of forests 

 which have long since disappeared. . . . We 

 should like to know whether the Valeria Indica, 

 which produces it, still abounds as a tree ; 

 as also what may have been the extent, what 

 the position and circumstances of the extinct 

 forests, of which it now constitutes the principal 

 trace. . . . Copal has of late years become so 

 scarce, so much in demand, and so dear, that 

 what was formerly thrown away would probably 

 be considered of value in the market ; and there 

 are few of the investigations a traveller can un- 

 dertake the people of England value so highly as 

 those that can be turned to commercial account. 

 Materially to reduce the price of coach- varnish 

 would probably be considered to entitle Captain 

 Burton to a larger share of the gratitude of his 

 countrymen than the measurement of the eleva- 

 tion of the Mountains of the Moon or the De- 

 termination of the Sources of the Nile.'^ 



On May 11, accompanied by Sidi Bombay 

 and by Said bin Salim, with his by no means 



^ I have reprinted the rest of tlie ])aper in my preface to a 

 Memoir on the Lake Regions of Central Equatorial Afi-ica. — 

 Journal Royal Geographical Society, xx. 18G0. 



