ON THE CAMPHOR-TREE OF SUMATRA. 
341 
rities. The collected juice is purified by pouring it through a kind 
of sieve, made from the fibrous tissue of the sheathing footstalk of 
palm-leaf (hindoe.) 
The camphor is found as a varnished, gluey, and clammy cover- 
ing, resembling turpentine, or in a solid grainy state, in the fissures 
of the bark, and in the laminary prominences. The surface near 
the root has chiefly a white covering, which is rarely thicker than 
one or two millimetres. This substance is highly estimated by 
the Battas, and fetches a high price. 
Colebrooke, and many other authors who have written on this 
subject, have said that the camphor is obtained from the middle of 
the trunk, and that every tree should produce a quantity of eleven 
pounds; the camphor being found in the heart of the tree in such 
a quantity as to fill a cavity of the thickness of an arm. This is 
quite exaggerated, and must be founded on an error. If it were true, 
the price of camphor would be lower than it is now. At Padang 
and at Tapanuli the price of a hundred pounds of camphor is near- 
ly ,£250. Such a quantity would in that case be obtained from nine 
trees. That proportion is highly improbable, and suffices to show 
the inaccuracy of the account. On the contrary, the camphor on- 
ly occurs in fissures of the wood, and the native of the Battas 
scrape it off with small splinters or with his nails. 
2. By maceration and decoction of the branches and pieces of 
bark and wood, another liquor containing camphor is obtained, 
but still in small quantities, and much mixed with water. The 
wood is cut into small fragments, and the leaves are bruised and 
boiled with water in an iron kettle, at the time that the trunk is 
being cut down, in order to use the pieces in their fresh state. In 
boiling, an oily substance rises to the surface, which is taken off 
with the shell of a cocoa-nut cut in half and provided with a han- 
dle. The liquor is poured into a bamboo, and closed in with a 
stopple formed of hindoe fibres, and at the return of the expedi- 
tion after many months it is poured into bottles. Dr. Junghuhn 
has two bottles filled with the liquid at the place itself. 
After a long stay in the woods (frequently of three months) the 
company, consisting of thirty persons, departs. It frequently hap- 
pens that during that period they fell more than a hundred trees, 
and yet they rarely take with them above fifteen to twenty pounds 
of solid camphor, worth <£40 to <£50. 
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