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 Santoor Sandal Tree (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, Santcdimi 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 floivers 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. 
