Am   .lour.  Pharm.  ) 
June,  1885.  i" 
Gambier  of  Joliore. 
313 
out  remunerative  to  the  cultivators.  Tapioca  is  also  cultivated  to  a  small 
extent,  so  is  the  tea  plant;  this  latter  chiefly  by  His  Highness  the  Maha- 
rajah himself.  The  territory  of  Johore  is  every  year  being  better  known  as 
explorers  advance." 
Regarding  the  forests,  Mr.  Meldrum  remarks:  "The  magnitude  and 
grandeur  of  the  forests  mny  be  viewed  from  the  summit  of  the  mountain 
Gunomg  Puled.    ^  As  far  as  the  eye  can  reach,  nothing  can  be 
seen  but  trees.  There  are  no  less  than  three  hundred  and  fifty  different 
kinds  of  wood  shown  in  tiie  Forestry  Exhibition,  ail  from  the  Johore 
forests." 
Gambier  Produclioa. — Tlie  cultivation  of  gambier  in  Johore  does  not 
differ  from  the  nietliod  pursued  in  the  Straits  Settlements,  that  is  to  say,  it 
is  cultivated  along  with  black  i^epper.    On  this  point,  Mr.  Meldrum^  says : 
Black  pepper  *    is  invariably  grown  by  tiie  gambier  planter 
(always  Chinese),  as  he  can  use  tlie  spent  leaves  of  the  gambier  plant  to 
manure  his  pepper  vines.  The  prices  of  gambier  and  black  pepper  have 
been  good  for  some  time  past,  partly  owing  to  the  war  in  Atcheen  and 
partly  owing  to  the  difficulty  of  procuring  forest  land  1br  new  plantations. 
The  straits  and  countries  near  appear  to  be  specially  adapted  for  the  growth 
of  gambier."  The  plant  cultivated  is  presumedly  Uneai'ia  Gambier; 
whether  other  varieties  are  under  cultivation  or  not  is  doubtful.  Here  I 
may  quote  from  the  '*  Kew  Report,"  for  1881,  an  item  of  some  interest : 
"  Ihicaria  Gambier. — Dr.  Trimen,  director  of  the  Royal  Botanic  Gardens, 
Peradeniya,  writes  (September  24)  :  'In  the  urgent  demand  for  raw  pro- 
ducts here,  I  tried  to  make  some  gambier  from  our  plant,  it  grows,  com- 
monly, not  far  from  the  garden.  I  followed  the  account  *given  in  the 
books,  but  could  not  succeed  in  producing  the  correct  article.  A  very 
excellent  astringent  extract  is  easily  obtained,  but  it  is  black  like  liquorice 
or  the  Acacia  Catechu  extract,  and  not  at  all  like  Terra  japonica.''  ^  * 
The  Ceylon  plant  is  uot  the  same,  as  Dr.  Thwaites  at  first  supposed  ;  it  is 
Uncaria  dasijoneura,  var.  Thwaitesii,  and  this,  as  Dr.  Trimen  points  out, 
may  account  for  the  different  ])roperties." 
A  lucid  description  of  the  manufacture  of  gambier  is  given  in  *'  Phar- 
njacographia,'  and  from  the  same  source  we  learn  that  the  gambier  indus- 
try was  begun  in  Singapore  (an  old  Johore  possession)  as  early  as  1819. 
Since  then  it  has  developed  enormously  in  the  Straits  Settlements  and  sur- 
rounding countries.  Thus,  in  the  north  and  northwest  of  Borneo,  the 
industry  in  the  hands  of  the  Chinese  has  been  most  successful,  the  value  of 
the  product  exported  in  1882  from  Sarawak  to  Singapore  being  118,851  dol- 
lars. The  value  of  gambier  annually  imported  into  Great  Britain  is  fully 
half  a  million  pounds  sterling.  I  endeavored  from  blue  books  and  similar 
sources  to  get  some  information  as  to  the  amount  of  gambier  produced  in 
Johore,  but  failing  in  this  I  applied  to  Mr.  Jamie,  late  of  Singapore,  and 
he  has  sent  me  a  most  interesting  letter  from  which  I  may  quote  : 
"  To  say  what  the  value  of  gambier  and  pepper  annually  sent  out  from 
1  In  a  lecture  on  "The  Johore  Forests."  For  these  references  and  otiier  information 
I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  Walter  Clark,  of  the  Edinburgh  INIuseuni  of  iScience  and  Art, 
whom  I  warmly  thank. 
