ON THE GAMBOGE TREE OF SIAM. 
45 
200 miles further west. But if the information recently communi- 
cated to the author be correct, the Siam tree is a fourth distinct 
species of the same section. In December last, he received from 
Mr. Robert Little, surgeon at Singapore, specimens taken from two 
trees which were cultivated there by Dr. Almeida, a resident of the 
colony, and which were obtained by him " direct from Siam," as 
the gamboge tree of that country. These specimens are not such 
as to allow of a complete description ; yet they are sufficient to 
show that the plant presents the characters of Wight's gamboge- 
bearing section of the genus Garcinia ; but that it is not any of the 
species hitherto so fully described as to admit of comparison with 
it. The fruit is round, not grooved, crowned by a four-lobed 
knotty stigma, and surrounded by numerous sessile or subsessile 
aborted anthers, and by a persistent calx of four ventricose fleshy 
sepals. The male flowers consist of a calx of the same structure, a 
corolla of four ventricose fleshy petals, and a club-shaped mass of 
about forty subsessile anthers, closely appressed, connected only at 
the mere base, one-celled flattened at the top, and opening by a 
circular lid along a line of lateral depressions ; and there is no ap- 
pearance of an aborted ovary amidst them. These are the charac- 
ters of the three species presently known. These three species very 
closely resemble one another in general appearance and special cha- 
racters. The new species presents the same close resemblance to 
them all; and, in particular, its foliage is undistinguishable from 
that of Garcinia elliptica, the leaves being acuminate, and leathery, 
exactly as described and delineated by Wight. But it differs from 
them all in the male fruit and flowers being peduncled. The male 
flowers are fascicled, and have a slender peduncle three-tenths of 
an inch in length. The single young fruit attached to one of the 
specimens has a thick, fleshy peduncle, like an elongated recepticle, 
half as long as the male peduncle. All the other species hitherto 
described, have both male and female flowers, sessile or subsessile. 
As this difference cannot arise from a mere variation in the same 
species, the plant must be a new one. The evidence, however, 
that it produces gamboge, and more especially the gamboge of 
Siam, is not yet complete, and, until further information on this 
point be obtained, which the author expects to receive in the 
course of the year, it appears advisable not to attach to it a specific 
name. A question may even arise whether the male flowers and 
