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Indian Forest Records. 
[VOL. I. 
unavailable. Among these causes may be mentioned the heat, the water 
and the action of the products resulting from the decomposition of the 
plant material, and the changes brought about by these in the composition 
of the volatile oil consist, according to Gildemeister and Hoffmann 
{he. cil.), of ‘ reduction, oxidation, polymerization, condensation, saponi- 
fication of esters, etc.’ 
It is thus evident that in order to definitely ascertain whether it would 
be worth while to extract Ngai camphor from the Blumea of Burma as an 
industrial undertaking, further experiments require to be made on the 
quality and yield of the oil and of the camphor obtained by distilling 
the plant on a large scale with some approximation to the conditions 
which obtain in practice. For the purpose a large copper still has been 
specially devised and is under construction, and as soon as it arrives 
in Dehra, large quantities of the shade-dried plant will be subjected to 
steam distillation to make a practical estimation of the percentage yield 
of both camphor and the oil. TiU then no reliable opinion can be formed 
as to the possibility of Blumea of Burma becoming an important com- 
mercial source of Ngai camphor. Further, in this way sufficiently large 
quantities of the oil of Ngai camphor will be made available to admit 
of an examination of the properties and chemical behaviom of the oil 
and of its portions obtained by fractionation, whereby it will be possible 
to determine the uses to which the oil and its fractions might profitably 
be devoted. 
CALOUXTA : FEINTED BY SUPDT. GOVT. PRINTING, INDIA, 8, HASTINGS STREET- 
