349 
PHARMACEUTICAL MEETING. 
Wednesday, December 7th, 1864. 
MR. HILLS, VICE-PRESIDENT, IN THE CHAIR. 
The minutes of the previous meeting having been read, the following 
DONATIONS TO THE LIBRARY AND MUSEUM 
were announced, and the thanks of the meeting given to the respective donors 
thereof:— 
The Chemical Eews. 
The Chemist and Druggist. 
The British Journal of Dental Science. 
The Dental Review. 
The Medical Circular. 
The Photographic Journal. 
The Educational Times. 
The Technologist. 
The Veterinarian. 
The Journal of the Society of Arts. 
The Journal of the Chemical Society. 
The Canada Lancet. 
Bulletin de la Societe Chimique de Paris. From the respective Editors. 
Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh. From the Society. 
Specimens of Savanilla Rhatany. Specimens of Peruvian Rhatany. From Mr* 
Haselden. 
Dried Specimens of the Lemon-Grass Plant. From Mr. Septimus Piesse. 
The following papers were then read :— 
ON THE BOTANICAL ORIGIN OF GAMBOGE. 
BY DANIEL HANBURY, E.L.S. 
The botanical origin of Gamboge has been long involved in some obscurity, 
for although the drug was evidently produced by a plant of the genus Garcinia 
it has not until recently been possible, for want of good specimens, to determine 
the species. 
Hermann, a Dutch naturalist of the seventeenth century, who resided in 
Ceylon, referred the origin of gamboge to two plants, one of which is known 
to modern botanists as Garcinia Morelia, the other as G. Cambogia; and we 
have it, on the authority of Mr. Thwaites, Director of the Royal Botanic Garden 
of Peradenia, that the former is capable of affording a very good form of the 
drug, but that such is not the case with the latter. It is, however, well known 
that gamboge is not an export of Ceylon, but that it is a production of Siam, a 
country which is still nearly unexplored by the botanist. Whether gamboge in 
Siam was yielded by the same tree as that which affords it in Ceylon, was a 
question which could only be settled by a careful examination of good botanical 
specimens. 
Some years ago Dr. Christison, of Edinburgh, received from Singapore speci¬ 
mens of a Garcinia cultivated there on the estate of Messrs. D’Almeida and 
Sons, which Garcinia had been brought from Siam as the true gamboge-tree. 
Dr. Christison, whose account appeared in the 1 Pharmaceutical Journal ’ for 
November, 1850, found this plant to be nearly allied to the G. elliptica of 
Wallich, but to differ from that species in having male flowers pedicellate , 
