although quietly and soberly coloured, the markings of their plumage are exceedingly neat and beautiful. Their quiet browns and other tints must be necessary to their very existence when engaged in incubation and the rearing of their young brood. Both sexes have a habit of crouching close to the ground when alarmed, and in this position even the gorgeously-coloured male has a good chance of escaping observation, the colour of his upper parts being chiefly brown, mottled with black, with a few dashes of red, and having a round white spot at the tip of each feather. The tail is somewhat roof-like in shape, and consists of twenty blackish feathers, which are mottled with yellowish on their basal half. These, as well as the largest of the tail coverts, are remarkably plain when compared with the rest of his plumage; the largest coverts are brown, edged at the end with a lighter tint of the same, inside of which is a blackish line. These feathers are somewhat squared at their ends, which circumstance, together with their edging, reminds one strongly of the plumage of the turkey, to which bird the horned pheasants are nearly related.

"The breadth of the light blue stripes on the wattle varies considerably in individual specimens. The plumage also varies much in depth of colour."

SANDAL-WOOD AND ITS COMMERCIAL
IMPORTANCE.

BY BERTHOLD SEEMANN, PH.D., F.L.S., F.R.G.S.

IF all the sandal ever burnt before the shrines or used in the manufacture of idols could be piled in one heap, what a mountain it would be! The trade in this fragrant wood, still important, has been going on since the dawn of history, and will probably not cease until the connection between sandal trees and idolaters, existing from time immemorial, shall have been broken up by either the one or the other becoming as extinct a race as the Archyopteryx, the Moa, or the Dodo. The religious sentiment of millions of human beings is still intimately associated with this wood. When the Hindoo or Buddhist beholds its smoke, incense-like, gently curling heavenwards, he feels that he has acted up to the religious duties expected from him, and that the perfume, smelling sweetly in the nostrils of his deity, "will cover a multitude of sins," of which he may have been guilty. History fails to record why sandal was chosen for offices so important, but we may easily fill up the blank. Mankind in its infancy attributed to their gods all the passions, weaknesses, and predilections common

to men. Sandal-wood as a perfume was in high esteem throughout tropical Asia, and for people with so limited conceptions nothing was more natural than to suppose it acceptable to supreme beings having passions identical with those of the worshippers. Some of the most ancient records inform. us of the prominent part played by the wood in India; and since the introduction of Buddhism into China, that country, itself destitute of the trees producing it, has become the principal market for this important production. The usual size preferred in the Celestial empire is of a diameter of four to six inches, and a length of three feet. A piece of these proportions (eight or twelve of which generally weighing one picul= 133 lb.) is regarded as the most acceptable offering a person can make to the idols of the temples. Large pieces are presented by the rich to burn on particular occasions. On certain festivals, for instance the beginning of the New Year, small pieces are abundantly sold in the streets to the lower classes. This is the case especially in the northern provinces of the empire; in Canton and other coast districts the population is less superstitious, and consequently less inclined to invest in sandal-wood. I visited a good many temples in Southern China, and never noticed whole pieces of the wood, but thousands of so-called "Joss-sticks," (pastile-like preparations, made of the saw-dust of sandal-wood and the dung of swine, stuck in pots of sand) burning slowly before the grave faces of the idols.

The perfume of the wood is owing to an essential oil, chiefly situated in the heart of the tree and near the root, the outer parts of old trunks and young trees being almost entirely without scent; hence, the sandal cutters carefully remove the outer and generally lighter portion of the wood, which they term the "sap." The oil is easily extracted, a pound of wood yielding about two drachms, and it is wonderfully strong and penetrating. Mixed with pure alcohol it forms the perfumer's "Extrait de bois de Santal," and in order to sweeten it for handkerchief use a slight addition of rose is required. It mixes well with soap. With charcoal and a little nitre it forms sandal pastiles for perfuming apartments; but these are indifferent in odour. Finally, from mixing favourably with otto of rose, it is often employed for adulterating that article. The seed of the Santalum album also yield by expression an oil, but that is thick and viscid, only fit for burning, and employed in that way by the poorer classes in India.

The chief European reputation of sandal rests upon its being a most excellent wood for carving. In the Indian collection of the Great Exhibition of 1862 there were an infinite variety of elaborately-worked card-cases, work-boxes, trays for

cards, walking-sticks, fly-flaps, and similar pieces of workmanship of it. The ancients seem to have been fully aware of this peculiarity, and the algum or almug trees which the fleets of Hiram and Solomon brought from Ophir, mentioned both in the first book of Kings (x. 11, 12) and the second of Chronicles (ix. 10, 11), never seen before that time in the land of Judah, and employed for making pillars and terraces for the temple and the king's house, and harps and psalteries for the singers, are supposed to have been sandal-trees. A more recent use has been prominently brought before the Indian public by Dr. Hunter, who has shown how admirably it is adapted for wood engravings. Some blocks yielded upwards of 20,000 impressions without being worn out. The dark-coloured wood, five inches in diameter, grown on rocky soil, is the best for the engravers' purpose. This has not been tried in England, as its price was thought to be too high, but on comparing it with box-wood, which sells in England for one penny the square inch, it was found to be cheaper in India than box-wood in England.

Sandal-wood is the produce of several species of Santalum, the type of the natural order Santalacea, and a genus composed of about twenty members, spread over Asia, Australia, and Polynesia, and best compared in aspect with myrtles. Indeed the Fiji islanders class their species of sandal-wood with the Myrtacea, and give it the same generic name. And they are not far wrong. Both have opposite leaves, furnished with oily dots, flowers similarly arranged, and an inferior ovary. But the genus Santalum, unlike Myrtaceae, has no petals, only a tetramerous, seldom pentamerous calyx, which in most species is white, but gradually changes to pink, and ultimately becomes brown. Hence some authors have described these trees as bearing differently coloured flowers.

The most easterly species is Santalum insulare, found in the Marquesas islands and Tahiti, where it is know as "Eai ;" the southernmost in New Zealand (S. Cunninghamii), known there as "Mairi ;" the northernmost in the Sandwich Islands; and the most westerly (S. album) in the Indian peninsula. All the species delight in dry, rocky localities, hovering about the craters of extinct volcanoes and similar situations, and degenerating in quality, commercially speaking, when growing in moist places. The most barren islands in the South Sea are those yielding the finest sandal; and as in such islands provisions are scarce, and the natives much less amiable than where food is abundant, we shall see in the sequel how disastrous this peculiarity has proved for the white race.

Santalum album, and a marked variety of inferior quality, known as myrtifolium, grows on the mountains of continental India and the Indian Archipelago, Mysore, Malabar, and

Canara being the principal districts. The tree is usually twentyfive feet high, and when allowed to attain a greater height its trunk is generally found rotten at the core. The natives have an idea that the trees ought to be felled in the wane of the moon; an idea Europeans are wont to laugh at, though they might look a little more closely into the matter before doing so. I remember that in tropical America I often heard the woodcutters declare it to be absolute folly to fell timber whilst the moon was on the increase, as it was sure to become rotten very

BRANCH OF SANTALUM ALBUM. (NAT. SIZE.)

soon, being then in full sap. The bark of the sandal-tree should be taken off immediately, and the trunks cut into billets two feet long. These should then be buried in a piece of dry ground for two months, during which time the white ants will eat away all the outer wood, without touching the heart, constituting the sandal of commerce; the billets ought then to be taken up and smoothed, and, according to their size, sorted into three kinds. The deeper the colour the higher is the perfume; and

hence the merchants sometimes divide sandal into red, yellow, and white; but these are all various shades of the same colour, and do not arise from any different species in the tree. The nearer the root, in general, the higher is the perfume; and care should be taken, by removing the earth, to cut as low as possible. The billets next to the root, when this has been done, are commonly called root sandal. In smoothing the billets, chips of the sandal are, of course cut off; so are also fragments in squaring their ends, both of which, with the smaller assortment of billets, answer best for the Arabian markets; and from them the essential oil is distilled, so much esteemed in Turkey. The larger billets are sent to China, and the middle-sized ones used in India. When thus sorted and prepared, the sandal, at least three or four months before it is sold, ought to be shut up from the rain and wind, in a close warehouse; and the longer it is kept, with such precautions, the better; its weight diminishing more than its smell. Prepared in this way, it rarely splits or warps, accidents which render it unfit for many of the purposes to which it is applied.

Sandal-wood is sometimes called in old English works "Sander's-wood," but our present form, "Sandal" (Arab. Sandal), is more correct; the Chinese term the wood collectively, "Tan-heong," i. e., scented tree. On the Malabar coast, Santalum album is termed, "Chandana cotta," whilst the Polynesian species go by the generic name of "Ahi" (with various prefixes and affixes), which in Fijian becomes "Yasi;" in Eromangan, "Nassau," and in Tanna, "Nebissi," and reminding one of Ayasru, the name Santalum album bears in Amboyna.*

Mr. E. Deutsch, of the British Museum, a distinguished oriental scholar, kindly forwarded the following reply to several questions which I put to him about the derivation, meaning, and nature of the various Asiatic names of the sandal-wood: "Sandal is termed 'Chandana' in Sanscrit, and is the name of the tree as well as its wood and the perfumes prepared from it. Chandana-chala is another name of the Malaya Mountain,' a part of the Southern Ghats, whence a great deal of sandal-wood is derived. The name does not imply fragrant wood or sweet wood.-The term 'Sandal' is Arabic, and also used in Hindustani; but does not seem to have any meaning save that of sandal-wood. That the Biblical Algum or Almug means sandal-wood is a mere recent conjecture. The Talmud identifies it, perhaps on account of the colour, with corals. Celsius believes it to be a spurious red sandal-wood (Pterocarpus santalinus), while the LXX. translate it weλEKηTά, Teúkiva, and the Vulgate, Cina (Hyedar? African Arbor vitæ ? or a kind of pine ?). David Kimchi, a commentator of the twelfth century, regards it as the Arabic Al-Baccam' (almond-tree, Casalpinia Sappan, Pterocarpus santalinus?). But this, too, is mere guess-work. The word is not of Hebrew or even of Semitic origin, but seems to have been handed over by the Arabs, who probably derived it from India. Almug, however, somewhat reminds of the Sanscrit terms, 'Mocha,' 'Mochata,' which also signify sandal-wood. You may, however, rest satisfied that nothing certain is known about the foregoing terms. They seem as if dropped from the sky, and philologists would be obliged if you could throw any light on them."