The annual imports of myrobalans into Hull, amount to about 1,600 cwts. The quantity which arrived at Liverpool was 185 tons in 1849, 851 tons in 1850; 27,212 bags in 1851, and 19,946 bags in 1852; they come from Calcutta and Bombay, and are also used for dyeing yellow and black. The price in January, 1853, was 6s. to 12s. per cwt. The average annual imports into the United Kingdom may be taken at 1,200 tons.
KINO.—The Kino, of Botany Bay and Van Diemen's Land, is the produce of the iron bark tree, Eucalyptus resinifera. White ("Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales"), says this tree sometimes yields, on incision, 60 gallons of juice. Kino is imported in boxes. The tincture of kino is used medicinally, but an inconvenience is frequently found to arise, from its changing to the gelatinous form. Dr. Pereira seems to think this species of kino consists principally of pectin and tannic acid. That chiefly used as East Indian kino, is an extract formed by inspissating a decoction of the branches and twigs of the gambler plant. Vauquelin analysed it, and found it to consist of, tannin and peculiar extractive matter, 75; red gum, 24; insoluble matter, 1.
The East Indian kino, imported from Bombay and Tellicherry, is the produce of Pterocarpus marsupium, a lofty, broad-spreading forest tree, which blossoms in October and November. The bark is of a greyish color, and is upwards of half an inch in thickness on the trunk. When cut, a blood-red juice speedily exudes and trickles down; it soon thickens, and becomes hard in the course of fifteen or sixteen hours. The gum is extracted in the season when the tree is in blossom, by making longitudinal incisions in the bark round the trunk, so as to let the gum ooze down a broad leaf, placed as a spout, into a receiver. When the receiver is filled it is removed. The gum is dried in the sun until it crumbles, and then filled in wooden boxes for exportation.
P. erinaceus, a tree 40 to 50 feet in height, a native of the woods of the Gambia and Senegal, furnishes kino, but none is collected in or exported from Africa. Butea frondosa, or the dhak tree of the East Indies, furnishes a similar product, in the shape of a milky, colored, brittle, and very astringent gum. Kino is used as a powerful astringent, and is administered in the form of powder and tincture. Some specimens of Butea kino, analysed by Prof. Solly, after the impurities had been separated, yielded 73¼ per cent. of tannin.
VALONIA is the commercial name of the cupula or cup of the acorn, produced by the Quercus ægilops and its varieties, the Balonia or Valonia oak, natives of the Levant, from whence, and the Morea, they form a very considerable article of export; containing abundance of tannin they are largely used by tanners. The tannin differs materially from that of nutgalls. The bark of Q. tinctorea, a native of North America, yields a yellow dye.
The quantity of valonia imported for home consumption, in 1836, was 80,511 cwts., of which Turkey furnished 58,724 cwts., and Italy and the Ionian islands 7,209 cwts. Of 163,983 cwts. imported in 1840, 143,095 cwts. were brought from Turkey, 15,195 cwts. from Italy, and the residue from Greece and the Ionian Islands. The entries for home consumption in the three years ending with 1842, amounted to about 8,200 tons a year. The increase since has been considerable, the imports having been, in 1848, 10,237 tons; in 1849, 16,671 tons; in 1850, 12,526 tons; in 1851, 10,639 tons; in 1852, 13,870 tons. We receive about 14,000 to 20,000 cwts. annually from Leghorn. The imports into the port of Hull are 3,900 cwts. per year.
The prices of Smyrna valonias are from £13 to £14 per ton; those of picked Morea, £10 per ton. The duty received on valonias imported in 1842 was about £4,000.
The annual produce is sufficient to meet the wants of all Europe. It can be had in Turkey to any extent and at all periods. Many cargoes are sent to Dublin, and the German markets. A little valonia is exported from Manila, the shipments having been about 150 tons per annum.
Camata and Camatina are two varieties of very young valonias, which are found more valuable for some processes of tanning than the common kinds.
Extensive as has been the enumeration of the vegetable substances used in the various branches of art and manufacture which have formed the principal subjects of this section, it is probable that with the progress of knowledge, of scientific experiment, and of investigation into the properties of given commodities, the list will be indefinitely increased. What I have stated will suffice to give the reader an idea of the surprising variety of sources from which we receive the raw materials which enable us to perfect some of the most elegant processes of manufacturing skill and ingenuity, and will further afford some criterion—though, of course, not a perfect one—for estimating the relative importance of the tanning and dyeing substances.