P etch— Mocharas and the Genus Haematomyces. 409 
names of drugs, there was formerly some difference of opinion whether 
Mocharas was obtained from the Bombax or the Areca palm. Birdw r ood, 
as quoted by Cooke, favoured the latter, and stated that all his attempts to 
obtain gum of any kind from Bombax completely failed in Bombay, and he 
had no hesitation in saying that the red cotton tree afforded no gum what- 
ever. It is, however, now definitely settled that Mocharas is the produce of 
the Bombax, and Birdwood’s failure to obtain anything of the kind from 
standing trees is quite in agreement with the experience of other observers. 
Mocharas was included in the collection of Indian gums and resins 
submitted to Cooke and is referred to by him on p. 40 of his Report. He 
quotes from the Pharmacopaeia of India that ‘ The astringent gummy 
exudation occurs in opaque, dark-brown, knotty pieces, some presenting 
a remarkable gall-like appearance, inodorous, of a strongly astringent 
taste.’ Cooke included it in his section on Astringent Gums, and stated that 
many pounds of it had been broken up, but no evidence had been found that 
it was an insect gall. ‘ They are not galls, but gall-like exudations, for 
there is every appearance of their having exuded, in a manner similar to gum, 
in a semi-fluid state/ 
Some further light was thrown on the subject by an article by 
•B. H. Baden- Powell in the ‘Indian Forester’, viii (1882), pp. 153-5. 
The following extract is quoted from his account : 
‘ In my garden at Lahore there are two large and well-grown Bombax 
trees, which must be as old as the very earliest British resident who came to 
Lahore, if not earlier. ... I detached bits of the bark from one of these 
trees, made incisions, cut into the surface only, and down to the sap-wood, 
but no gum or any other exudation of any kind appeared. But the other 
tree, which divides into two stems at about eight or ten feet from the ground, 
is covered, as to its lower part, with a clustering mass of the lovely “ pink 
coral creeper” (Antigonum leptopus ). Having occasion to trim this, and 
remove the old stems or bine, I disclosed the surface of the tree, and saw 
that, close to the fork of the two branches, the stem was somewhat swelled, 
the bark was all broken up and excoriated, as if in fact a large sort of 
unhealthy swelling sore was there : a mass of brownish or blackish powder, 
or rather friable grains, had also fallen and collected at the foot of the tree. 
This residue looked rather like the excreta of some insects boring into the 
bark, but I could not detect any trace whatever of any bark-eating insects, 
or any aphides, &c. A great deal of this powdery stuff was to be brushed 
off the wood itself, seeming to come from the disintegration of the bark over 
the sore. From all parts of this sore I found great masses of the Mochras 
which had exuded and dried there : much of it was old and partly rotten, 
but some that was fresh looked like deep brown bubbles or shells that had 
irregularly contracted in drying. I cleared away all the powder, and 
picking out the best bits of Mochras to go to Dr. Cooke, I cleared away the 
