COMPOSITION OJi' GAMBOGE. 
133 
ART. XXIII,— ON THE SOURCES AND COMPOSITION OF 
GAMBOGE, WITH AN EXAMINATION OF SOME ANALO- 
GOUS CONCRETE JUICES. By Robert Christison, M,D,, 
Professor of Materia Medica in the University of Edinburgh. 
fRead before the Royal Society of Edinburgh^ March 7, 1836. J 
This memoir is published in Sir W. Hooker's Companion 
to the Botanical Magazine, a work which has long been 
eminent for the value of its contents, and which, first conduct- 
ed by Mr. Curtis, is the oldest of all the botanical periodicals 
in this country. As it is the oldest, so also it is the best. 
While perusing the admirable article of Dr. Christison, we 
received the thirteenth number of the Madras Literary and 
Scientific Journal, (a work of great merit,) for which we are 
indebted to the kindness of the Editor. It contains a paper 
by our friend Dr. Wight, relative to the plant which affords 
the Gamboge, from which we will present our readers with 
the knowledge of botanists upon this subject. Dr. Wight 
and Mr. Arnott, in their Prodromus of the Botany of India, 
have stated that the Xanthochymus ovalifolius is the plant 
from which gamboge exudes. Dr. Graham, of Edinburgh, in 
a letter to Dr. Wight, affirms that the plant is " undoubtedly 
the Garcinia {Mangostana, Goert.) ikfore//« of Desrousseaux 
and Goertner. Arnott now thinks it Garcinia ZeylanicaP 
Graham conceives that the Garcinia Morella is in reality no 
Garcinia^ but a Stalagmitis, or rather it presents the type 
of a new genus, which he proposes to term Hebradendron. 
The plant from which Dr. Graham draws these conclusions is, 
according to Dr. Wight, an exotic in Ceylon, having been 
found by Colonel Walker near a Dutch fort, and being of very 
rare occurrence. It is the gamboge of this tree which Dr. 
Christison appears to have examined, and which is quite 
diflferent from common Ceylon gamboge. Dr. Wight leaves 
the question undetermined, but throws out some important 
