350 
PHARMACEUTICAL MEETING. 
instead of sessile. Desirous of carrying the inquiry a little further, and of 
attempting to set at rest the question of the origin of gamboge, I recently 
addressed myself to Messrs. D’Almeida, who promptly replied to my letter, and 
forwarded a jar containing numerous specimens of the gamboge-tree cultivated 
on their plantation at Singapore. These specimens I carefully examined, com¬ 
paring them with published descriptions and figures, as well as with specimens 
contained in the herbaria of the British Museum, of the Royal Gardens of Kew, 
and of the Linnean Society, in which investigation I had the valuable assistance 
of my friend Professor Oliver. The correctness of Dr. Christison’s observation 
respecting the pedicellate flowers was immediately obvious, and it was also 
evident that the plant, but for this character, bore a strong resemblance to 
Garcinia elliptic a ; we noticed further that it came equally near to the G. Mo¬ 
relia of Desroussefiux. Under these circumstances we thought it desirable to 
obtain the opinion of Mr. Thwaites, who, besides being an excellent botanist, 
was familiar with various species of Garcinia in a living state and especially 
with G. Morelia. Mr. Thwaites, after examining specimens of the Singapore 
gamboge-tree, which we had sent to him in Ceylon, replied that the plant was, 
in his opinion, a form of G. Morelia , scarcely differing from the Ceylon type, 
except in having pedicellate instead of sessile flowers. This opinion was com¬ 
pletely in accordance with that of Professor Oliver and other botanists whose 
opinion I had asked, and I therefore felt warranted in bringing the plant before 
the Linnean Society, in whose ‘ Transactions ’ a figure of it has been published, 
under the following name and synonyms :— 
Garcinia Morella, Desrouss., var . pedicellata. 
G. Morelia , Desrousseaux, in Lamarck’s Encyclop. Method. Botan. iii. 701, pi. 405, 
fig. 2 ; Thwaites, Enum. Plant. Zeylan. i. 49. 
G. elliptica , Wallich, Catal. no. 4869. 
G. Gutta , Wight, Illustr. of Indian Botany, i. 126, tab. 44 (exclus. synon. Linnsei). 
Ilebradendron cambogioides , Graham, in Hooker’s Companion to Bot. Mag. ii. (1836, 
193, tab. 27. 
Tar. (3. pedicellata; floribus masculis pedicellatis (pedicelli ad 3 lin. longi). 
Messrs. D’Almeida informed me that the number of gamboge-trees cultivated 
on their plantation is twenty-eight, but that it might have been increased to 
thousands had any pains been taken to do so. The trees are from thirty-five to 
fifty feet in height, the largest having a circumference of three feet. They 
grow very luxuriantly, without any attention, on the slope of a low hillock. 
Gamboge has at various times been extracted from them, but rather, it would 
seem, as an object of curiosity than for the purposes of commerce. 
Professor Bentley said that the subject of the paper just read was scarcely 
of a nature to admit of much discussion in that room ; he would therefore only 
.remark that, in his opinion, Mr. Hanbury had now put the last link in the chain 
of evidence necessary to prove the botanical source of our commercial gamboge. 
Commercial gamboge, as was well known, was derived from Siam ; it did not 
differ in any marked particulars from the gamboge of Ceylon, and the botanical 
source of the two kinds had now been satisfactorily traced to varieties of the 
.same species of Garcinia. 
