African teak, let me note, is not teak properly so called, but the timber of the Oldfieldia Africana. It is largely imported from the west coast of Africa, and though an useful wood, lacks the most valuable properties of the genuine teak.
The teak is a handsome and even stately tree, often attaining the noble stature of 130 to 150 feet, with a trunk of proportionate diameter, upright, well-shaped, and surmounted by wide-spread branches. Its large leaves are oval, of a velvety under-surface, and besprinkled on the upper with whitish spots. Its flowers cluster at the extremity of the branch in an ample and beautiful panicle. The poisonous properties of its wood preserve it from the attacks of vermin, but render it dangerous to work, for men who are but lightly wounded by its splinters die after a very brief interval.
A less useful timber than the teak, but much esteemed for the manufacture of articles of luxury, is furnished by the Diospyros ebenum and the Santalum album.
In the Flora of tropical Asia a very important position is occupied by the Laurel family. Several species of this family deserve to be particularized on account of their commercial value: thus, from the Laurus camphora comes the camphor most esteemed by British physicians, while the aromatic rinds of the Laurus cinnamomum, Culilawan, Malabathrum, and Cassia, constitute the various kinds of cinnamon. The Laurus cassia is not to be confounded with another Indian tree, one of the Leguminosæ, the Cassia fistula, whose enormous cods formerly played an important rôle under the name of Cassia in therapeutic science. While speaking of trees which produce aromatic substances, I must not forget to mention the Styrax benzoïn, and the Boswellia serrata. The former is a member of the family Styracaceæ, whose trees or shrubs, chiefly tropical, are known by their monopetalous flowers, their epipetalous stamens, their long radicle, leafy cotyledons, and by a part at least of the ovules being suspended. The Styrax benzoïn, a native of the Indian islands, yields the resin called benzoin. The juice exudes from incisions made in the bark, and when dried, is removed by a knife or chisel. Each tree yields about three pounds’ weight annually, the gum formed during the first three years being superior in quality to that which subsequently exudes. It is largely employed by perfumers, and in medicine is esteemed a remedy for chronic pulmonary disorders. Styrax officinale, a native of the Levant, furnishes the balsamic resinous substance known as storax, which is also one of the materials manipulated by perfumers, and in medicine is used as a stimulating expectorant.
The Boswellia serrata supplies the fragrant incense whose vapours were anciently supposed to be peculiarly agreeable to the gods made by man’s hands or conceived by his imagination.
India is also the native country and home-land of the Indigo plants (Indigofera tinctoria, and Indigofera anil, of the Leguminosæ family), and the Gossypiums, from whose expanded fruits is obtained the all-powerful cotton; and in Cochin-China we meet with the Croton sebiferum or Stillingia sebifera (family of the Euphorbiaceæ), whose berries contain a rich concrete substance called “tree-tallow,” employed, in the far East, in the manufacture of tapers. The latter tree, popularly known as the “Tallow Tree,” has rhomboid leaves, with two prominent glands at the point of attachment between the stalk and the leaf; and its flower catkins are from two to four inches long. “Its fruits contain three seeds thickly coated with a fatty substance which yields the tallow. This is obtained by steaming the seeds in large caldrons, and then bruising them sufficiently to loosen the fat without breaking the seeds, which are removed by sifting. The fat is afterwards made into flat circular cakes, and pressed in a wedge-press, when the pure tallow exudes in a liquid state, and soon hardens into a white brittle mass. This tallow is very extensively used for candle-making in China; but as the candles made of it become soft in hot weather, they generally receive a coating of insect wax. A liquid oil is obtained from the seeds by pressing. The tree yields a hard wood used by the Chinese for printing blocks, and its leaves are employed for dyeing black.”[164]
Climbing and epiphytous[165] plants are very numerous in India; but there are none, perhaps, which in vegetative force and tenacity can be compared to those of the Calamus, and particularly of the Calamus rotang (family of the Palmaceæ). These Lianas are all remarkable for their flexible stem, which attaches itself to the trees, and frequently attains the prodigious length of 200, 250, 300, and even 350 yards. This stem is formed of a series of internodes, or jointed pieces, more or less wide apart, each of which bears a leathery flower, with elongated sheath. The Calami frequently render the forests which they inhabit virtually impenetrable, through their long, flexible, and tenacious arms, stretching across from tree to tree, or crawling over the ground, and bristling with formidable thorns. It is these stems which are imported into Europe as bamboos, cut into different lengths, and there employed for various industrial purposes.
But it is time we took our leave of India, and allowed “observation with extensive view” to survey the far-spreading African forests. There, in the first place, we are called upon to salute the patriarch of the tropical Flora, the Baobab (Adansonia digitata), a gigantic genus of the family Bombaceæ.
