146 
MATURE NOTES. 
ture in India, from the scratched poppy heads to the finished 
opium ball, a complete opium-smoking apparatus, samples of 
Asia Minor opium, and the alkaloids obtained from it. 
A similar instructive arrangement is carried on throughout 
the entire collections, where the processes of manufacture are of 
such a nature as to be suitable for glass cases. Besides which, 
interspersed in their regular order, will be found illustrations of 
plant structure of scientific rather than of commercial interest, 
and many that have an equal interest in both directions. Thus 
many may be surprised to know that the source of the best 
varnish, that produces the brilliant gloss on the panels of 
carriages, is from a fossil resin which is dug up at Zanzibar, 
in places where the trees which once yielded it now no longer 
exist. Until comparatively recent years the origin of this resin, 
known in commerce as anime, was unknown. It was supposed 
to have been a leguminous plant, leaflets having been found 
deposited in the buried resin, but some years since flowers also 
were found so deposited, which, together with other facts, prove 
the tree which yielded this best fossil anime to be Trachylobium 
verrucosum, the resin of which fetches sometimes as much as 
/400 per ton. Speaking of resinous products used in varnish 
making, brings to mind a similar product known as lacquer — 
a term, by the way, that is applied in commerce to several 
different substances. Thus we have the well-known Japan 
lacquer, obtained by gashing the trunks of the trees of Rhus 
vermicifera, from which the juice readily flows. This juice is of a 
very acrid nature, like that of most of the species of rhus— the 
North American poison vine (Rhus toxicodendron ) producing 
dangerous effects if the juice is allowed to drop on the hands. 
In consequence of this poisonous or blistering character, great 
care is taken by the Japanese collectors to protect their hands 
with thick gloves. After the juice is drawn from the wounds 
in the trunks it is prepared for use by mixing with various 
ingredients or different colouring substances as required. The 
process of lacquering, as formerly practised by the Japanese, 
was a very tedious one, the articles themselves, which are mostly 
made of wood, being so completely covered with the lacquer 
that a very thick deposit is laid on, metals like gold and silver 
'powder, being so used as to give the article the appearance of 
having been made of solid metal. Some of the old Japanese 
lacquer work is very fine and very costly, good examples of 
w r hich may be seen in South Kensington Museum, but in the 
Kew Museum not only are the finished articles shown but the 
whole process, from the trunks of the varnish trees scored to 
show the collection of the sap, onwards. Indian lacquer work 
differs from that of the Japanese both in the nature of the raw 
product as well as in the mode of preparing and manipulating it. 
Lac, as it is commonly called, is a kind of resinous exudation 
formed by the puncture of a small hemipterous insect in the 
bark of a certain species of Ficus and several other trees. The 
