THE ALMUG, OR ALGUM TREE OF THE ANCIENTS. 
Ill 
a free circulation of air. Cuttings of the young wood taken off at a joint, and 
planted in pots of sand under a hand-glass in a brisk, moist heat, will grow freely. 
The Santooe Sandal Teee (Sandoricum indicum); Fig. c, forms a spreading 
tree about forty feet in height ; it is a native of the Philippine and Molucca Islands, 
and various parts of the Indian Continent. The wood is not red, like the two last, 
but bears a strong resemblance to that of the true Sandal-tree, Santalum album : it is, 
however, altogether destitute of that fine fragrance by which the latter wood is charac- 
terised. It is used for various domestic purposes. The leaves are pinnated ; leaflets 
three, ovate-oblong, entire, downy. Flowers yellow, produced in axillary panicles. 
Calyx short, bluntly five-toothed. Petals five, linear, acute. Stamens ten, forming 
a tube. Anthers inclosed. Stigmas five, bifid. Fruit a berry, shaped like an apple, 
fleshy, with an agreeably acid taste. Nuts five, ovate, compressed, two-valved. It 
belongs to the Natural Order Meliacece, or Meliads of Lindley's "Vegetable Kingdom." 
In cultivation the heat of a stove is requisite, and the plants should be potted 
in a mixture of turfy peat and loam, and increase is readily effected by cuttings of 
the ripened wood, planted in pots of sand, and plunged under a glass in heat. 
Although the above-described Sandal-trees are deservedly esteemed in their 
native countries, yet the abundant supplies afforded, — the consequent cheapness 
of the wood, — and the uses to which the timber is applied by the natives, together 
with the absence of any peculiar aroma ; all warrant the conclusion that none of 
these could be the Almug of the Ancients, which was fragrant, rare, and costly. 
The true Indian Sandal-wood is the produce of Santalum album, (fig. a), 
and is described by Roxburgh, in " Bot. Mag.," 3235, as a tree-like shrub, 
growing twenty or thirty feet high; branched low down, two-and-a-half to three 
feet in circumference. Bark brownish, scabrous, longitudinally cleft. Branches 
numerous, much divided, spreading, and rising in every direction, forming nearly a 
spherical head ; the young shoots round and smooth. Leaves opposite, petioled, 
oblong, smooth, entire, glaucous below, from one-and-a-half to three inches long. 
Petioles smooth. Thyrsi of flowers axillary and terminal. Pedicels opposite, the 
lower pair of each thyrsus generally three-flowered. Flowers numerous, small, 
at first straw-coloured, changing to a deep ferruginous purple, scentless, as are all 
the external parts of the young growing plant, even when bruised. Calyx one- 
leaved, campanulate ; margin four-partite. Segments ovate, smooth, the base of 
the bell only permanent. Corolla none, except the calyx or nectarial glands be 
considered as such. Nectary of four roundish, fleshy glands, on the mouth of the 
calyx, alternate with the segments, and when the flower first expands, it is the most 
coloured part entire. Filaments four, alternate with the nectarial glands, and of 
the same length, smooth ; behind each a tuft of white hairs springs from the disk of 
the calycine segments, perfectly distinct from the stamens, but of the same length ; 
the extremities of these long white woolly hairs adhere to the back of the small two- 
lobed anthers. Germen half superior, one-celled, with one conical seed at the 
bottom. Style as long as the tube of the calyx. Stigma three-nerved, four-lobed. 
