ON THE GAMBOGE TREE OF CEYLON. 
19 
ART. III.— REMARKS ON THE GAMBOGE TREE OF CEY- 
LON, AND CHARACTER OF HEBRADENDRON, A NEW 
GENUS OF CUTTIFERiE, AND THAT TO WHICH THE 
TREE BELONGS. By Robert Graham, M. D., Professor of Botany 
in the University of Edinburgh. {With a figure.) 
There are, in tropical countries, many plants which yield 
a yellow juice, so nearly resembling Gamboge in external 
characters, and, it is said, even in medical properties, that they 
have each obtained in their respective countries the name of 
Gamboge Plant. These belong to exceedingly dissimilar fa- 
milies, their products are never exported from the countries 
in which they grow, and they are therefore known not to 
yield any part of the Gamboge of commerce. It has been 
much doubted, however, whether this is the produce of one 
plant only, and those botanists who believe that it is so, differ 
in opinion as to what that plant is. 
Modern naturalists think this substance is obtained from a 
plant belonging to the natural family of Guttiferse ; and they 
generally differ only in believing, either with Murray, that 
this plant is Stalagmitis cambogioides; or, with De Candolle, 
that it is Garcinia Cambogia, (see Essai sur les Proprietis 
Medicates des Plantes, p. 105.) Murray's opinions were 
founded upon certain MSS. by Konig, and the examination of 
a specimen collected by him, both of which were in the pos- 
session of Sir Joseph Banks, by whose liberality he was al- 
lowed to publish his observations, which appeared in 1789, in 
the ninth volume of the Comment at iones Societatis Regise 
Scientiarum Gottingensis. 
The authors of the British and several of the continental 
pharmacopoeias, have adopted Murray's opinions ; but, in a 
paper read to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, March, 1836, 
I stated my belief that this acquiescence had been somewhat 
