Mav i, 1882.] THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. 
943 
house. Take away his rattan, and you deprive the 
Dyak of half the articles indispensable to his existence. 
What crochet- work is to the European lady, rattan 
plaiting is to the Dyak housewife. She is always 
manufa< turiug either sleeping mats, sitting mats, sirih 
boxes, baskets of all shapes and sizes, and for all 
kinds of uses, besides long pieces of plait to be used 
as cords, ropes, or threads, in dressmaking, house- 
building, raft construction, and the hundred and one 
other purposes of daily life in the forest. 
"Iu some parts of the interior 1 have seen baskets 
made from the bark of the trees which are prefectly 
watertight. 
"The next product which claims the Dyak'sattenliou, 
and is largely exported, is gutta-percha (median), which 
is yielded by many different species of trees. The 
tree yielding the best gutta percha is called by the 
natives Komallau Dunan from the resemblauce of its 
leaves to those of the Durian. Another variety is 
known as the Komallau Ramas. The natives eat the 
fruit, which is somewhat sweet in flavour. The juice 
when first extracted is of a milky-white colour; but 
it turns chocolate-brown as it hardens by exposure 
to the air. The Dyaks have not yet graduated in 
the science of forest conservation, lusttad of making 
incisions at regular intervals in the bark of a tree, 
and extracting a portion of the juice at different periods, 
by which its further growth would not be prevented, 
they usually adopt the radical expedient of cutting 
tho whole tree down. The consequence is that the 
material is becoming more and more difficult to procure, 
and will eventually become scarce, if not extinct, in 
the island. . . . 
"Another occupation is gathering wax (Wing) from 
the nests of the indigenous bees. Along the banks of 
the rivers may be soen hundreds of high straight trees, 
covered with from twenty to sixty nests. It is a 
curious fact — at variance with the almost universal 
habit among all animals to conceal their nests as 
much as possible— that tho bees always select for 
their nests a tree with a light grey bark, against 
which their dark-coloured homes stand out very 
conspicuously. These wonderful architectural structures, 
again, are always placed near the river, never in the 
interior of the forests. If this is done by an instinctive 
desire to protect the" nests from the ravages ci monkeys 
aud other animals inhabiting the woods, it is strange 
that the insects should defeat tins object in the colour 
of the nests. 1 was told by the Dyaks that the 
Orang I'oonau* (the forest people) are the chief collectors 
of wax, pulling clown the nests in the night, when 
it is very dark, and driving away or sutlocating the 
insect communities by means of their smoke-producing 
damar torches They often get stung during the 
operation, but bear the pain with indifference. The 
honey (madoe) is nearly all kept by the natives for 
home consumption, and the wax exported, the price, 
uncleaued, being 80 florins per picol of 120 Unities. 
"The natives, and especially the Onng l'oonan, 
also make it a regular industry twice a year to 
visit the caves in which a species of swallow, t*:e 
//iriniilii 1 sc 11 1* it fit breed, and to collect tneir nests, 
which form the basis of the celebrated Chinese dish 
of birds-nest soup. Tho.-o edible birda-nests (wrong 
boeronuj) are of two varieties, nnd fetch high prices, 
tho whiter kind realising from 160 to [80 il inns per 
six kattics, aud the coloured or inferior quality selling 
for from 11(1 to 115 florins per six kattics. 
"A curious industry is the collection of galign, or 
beziar stones, which arc also mostly secured by the 
Orange l'oonan. These galiga are highly prized lor 
* A race of fair-skinned Dyaks, desribod and 
sketched in his book by the author, who was the 
first European to penetrate into their forest homes, 
aud to see the women ol the tribe. 
to the Boegis, who re-sell them to the Chinese 
medicinal purposes, and are sold at fabulous prices. 
There are two sorts, the galiga landnk and G. boehiv. 
The former, the more expensive of tha two, are derived 
from an external wound on the porcupine. They are 
very light in weight, and of a brown colour. They 
taste exactly like quinine; and so strong is this; 
property that when a piece is held inside the hand, 
aud the tongue applied outside, the bitter taste can 
be detected. It appears to me that these galiga are 
composed of bits of leaves, &c, gradually collected 
on the wound, and formed into a ball by the congealed 
blood. The other sort, the O. boehis, are found at 
times, the Dyaks tell me, in different parts of the 
body of the boehis monkey (Semnopithecus cri.itntus), 
called in the interior bochix. They are of a greenish- 
brown colour, often beautifully polished, and are mostly 
kidneyshaped, though varying in colour. They are 
nothing else than gallstones, similar to those found 
in human bodies. The Chinese grind the {/nlif/a to 
a powder, and take a little of it in a tumbler of 
water. The curative propeities attributed to this 
draught are legion; there is not an ailment that it 
is not able to cure. It may, indeed, be called the 
' Holloway's Pills and Ointment' of the Chinese, rolled 
all into one."— Colonies and India. 
THE ALKALOIDS OF CUPREA BARK. 
Mr. David Howard's letter, in reference to a note 
which appeared in the Chemical News last week, gives 
good reasons for withholding assent to the sugges- 
tion that the crystalline alkaloid, observed in cuprea 
bark simultaneously and independently by several 
chemists, is merely a compound of quinine and quin- 
idine. If that were the case we should have to admit 
that by the combination of these two alkaloids the 
capability of one of them to form a very sparing 
hydriodate was obliterated, and that by the union 
of a dextrogyrate alkaloid with one of hevogyrate 
action the rotatory power was augmented in one direc- 
tion instead of being reduced to nothing, as analogy 
would suggest in such a ease. Moreover the occur- 
rence of quinidine together with quinine is not a 
circumstance peculiar to cuprea bark, but is frequent 
in other varieties, though the crystalline alkaloid 
obtained from the former has not been observed in 
them. It seems to be unquestionably peculiar to 
cuprea bark, and from that point of view to rank 
with the unusual crystalline form of the sulphate 
obtained from this bark as one of several reasons 
for believing that it contains a hitherto unknown 
alkaloid. — Pharmaceutical Journal, January 14. 
NOTE ON A COMPOUND OF QUININE AND 
AND QUINIDINE." 
ItY C. n. WOOD AND E. L. BARRET. 
(Pharmaceutical Journal, 21st January 1882.) 
The discovery of a new alkaloid, closely resembling 
quinine, in that description of cinchona bark kuowu 
in commerce as " cuprea b»rk," recently made by 
I). Howard and J. llodgkin, and almosst simul- 
taneously announced by B H. Pan] and A. (i. 
Cowuloy, aud by W. <!. WhitVcn. will doubtless 
attract much attention. As these ebemisti all de- 
scribe this newly discovered alkaloid U obieflj re- 
marked for its property of crystallizing from an 
ethereal solution, it may be of in'ere»t to briefly 
refer to a peculiar crystalline body which we also 
first became acquainted with in workiug on samples 
of those cuprea barks. 
When cuprea bark firot OWli into the market, we 
n'oti 1 that an ethereal so'u on of the total alkal- 
• I'rom the Chrmical .NVir , January 6, 1881. " 
