1837.] Remarks on the Gamboge Tree of Ceylon. 



241 



bogia of Gartner, Garcinia Cambogia of Desrousseaux and of De Can- 

 dolle. 



LinnoGus lastly in the same work, cites as a synonym for his Cam- 

 bogia " Carcapuli Acostee, arbor Indica gumrni guttam fundens, fructu 

 dulci, rotundo, cerasi magnitudine," of Burmann's Thesaurus Zeylanu 

 cus, which, I think, is certainly Mangostana Morella of Gaertner 

 Garcinia Morella of Desrousseaux and De Candolle, and, as certainly, 

 Stalagmilis cambogioides of Moon's Catalogue of Ceylon Plants, and 

 of Mrs. Walker ; but by no means the " Carcapuli" of Acosta in his 

 Tractado de las Drogas, p. 356 ; which seems to be Carcapuli Acostcs 

 of Pluk. Aim. 81, Garcinia Cambogia of Desrousseaux. 



It would probably be thought tedious and useless to follow the con* 

 tradictions of authors regarding the identity of these plants, and that 

 which yields Gamboge, from 1748, when the Flora Zeylanica was pub- 

 lished, to the present day. I shall therefore pass them all over, until I 

 come to the latest. In the excellent " ProdromusFlorce Peninsulce In- 

 dies Orientalis," published by my friends, Dr. Wight and Mr. Arnott, in 

 1834, it is stated that Stalagmitis cambogioides (of Murray) is a species 

 of Garcinia, and perhaps identical with Garcinia Cochinchinensis of 

 Choisy, Occycarpus Cochinchinensis of Loureiro. The whole of the 

 account given by Murray of his Stalagmitis appeared to me, at the 

 time I communicated my observations to the Royal Society, so enig- 

 matical that I felt unable to form an opinion as to what it is j but I 

 expressed my fears that the statement of Wight and Arnott only threw 

 out another temptation to blunder ; for Murray says, that in his plant, 

 the flowers are arranged on a common footstalk, generally more than 

 an inch long, in the axils of the leaves, jointed and bearing the pedi- 

 cels, which are twice the length of the flowers themselves, in verticels 

 at the joints, and that the fruit is globular, white, slightly reddened on 

 one side, and sometimes twice the size of a large cherry ; while 

 Loureiro and Choisy describe their plant as having clustered nearly 

 sessile flowers, with a pear-shaped reddish-yellow fruit, two inches in 

 diameter. Wight and Arnott further say, that the Stalagmitis cam- 

 bogioides of Moon is the Xanthochymus ovalifolius of Roxburgh ; but 

 Roxburgh describes his plant as having a three-celled ovary, a fruit as 

 large as a small apple, while the genus is partly characterized by the 

 flowers having five petals, and by the presence of five large truncated 

 glands, alternating with the fasciculi of stamens. On the other hand, 

 Mrs. Walker's drawings, and specimens of the fruit sent by Mr. Blair 

 to Dr. Duncan, show that this, like the fruit of Garcinia Morella, is 

 four-celled, and not larger than a cherry ; and in the specimens which 

 Mrs. Walker has sent to me, I never find more than four petals, and 

 cannot see a trace of these glands. I only mention these circumstances 

 now, to show the inextricable confusion in which the subject lay, and 

 in which it would have remained, had it not been for Mrs. Walker and 



