GUMS AND RESINS OF AUSTRALIA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume VI, Issue 425, 29 November 1856, Page 4

GUMS AND RESINS OF AUSTRALIA.

; A very important paper on this subject was lately read before the Melbourne Philosophical Society, the more important poitions of which are subjoined:— It has been well observed by Professor Solly (Jury Uoports, p. 711), that " a great deal of practical iuconvenience And confusion'is caused by the indiscriminate , manner -in which the term gum is used in commerce and the'arts. ■ It would certainly be an advantage if t]|V^ 8" tinctions employed in scientific books \s?e to be generally adopted by merchants and' drugbrokers, the term gum being solely applied to those natural vegetable exudations which soften or dissolve in water, and yield a more or leßs perfect mucilage,, and the term resin to those which are wholly insoluble in water, but which soften 'and dissolve in' ether, the 'essential oils,' and "' spirits of wine,' and the" term gum resin being used to designate those mixtures of gum and resin which are intermediate iv. properties, and partake of-the nature oi 1 each, being partially and imperfectly soluble,both in water and in alcohol." Gum. properly so called, is used in largo quantities for a number of purposes in the arts. It'is' generally distinguished into soluble gum, or gum Arabic, which readily and perfectly dissolves in water, forming a clear mucilage, and cherry-tree gum, or gum tragacanth, and these difficultly-soluble kinds' of gum which, though they soften easily, uo not readily form mucilage. Gum is extensively, used in finishing and giving lustre to crapes, silk goods, &c.,.by calico-prin-ters, shoemakers, and m other trades. As instances of the immense-traffic carried'pn in gums, I may state that one Liverpool firm' imported' in three years gum-Senegal to the' value of £100,000. Gunis to value oi" 3,250,000 francs have been shipped annually from Alexandria. The exports from Morocco reach to 250 or 300 tons, and India exports 1,500 or , I,GOO tons. , f • • The gum Arabic of commerce is the produce ' of various species of acacia, which yield this substance in considerable quantities, particularly A. vera, a native of Arabia and of Africa, from i Senegal to . Egypt, which supplies the • finest qutltties; A. arabiea, a similar tree, common ,ir India and Africa, which yields part of the Turjr key and East.lndia gvim ; the red pieces con^stituting the gum gedda and gum babool of commerce. According to the statement of Dr. Yaughan, of Aden, the acacia which yields gum Arabic is generally a small shrub, of a,dry and withered appearance; occasionally, however, it shoots out into a tree of from 20 to 30 feet high. , ' ■ During the hot season the men and boys are daily employed in collecting gums, which • process is carried on as follows:—About the end of February or the beginning of March,- the Bedouins visit all the trees in succession, and make a deep incision in each, pulling oil* a ncrrow strip of bark for about five inches below the the wound. This is left for a month, when a fresh'ineision is made in the same place, but deeper. jV third month elapses, and the operation "is again repeated, alter which the - gum is supposed to have attained a greater degree of consistency. .The mountain sides,are-immedia-tely covered-with parties of men and boys,' who scnipe off the largo dear globules into ono basket, whilst the inferior quality that has run down the tree is packed separately. The gum when first taken from the troo is. very soft, but1 hardens quickly, Every fortnight the mountains are visited in this manner, the' trees' producing large quairtHies as the season advances,' until the middle of September, "when tho iirsf shower of rain puts a,close to the gathering ol that year. Large quantities of jjutn Arabic arc collected "by persons in tho employ of tly Egyptian Government, and brought to Cairo vi

caravans) to be warehoused. The annual Sjituni occasionally roaches to 20,000 packages Spf'7B lbs. each. 'JH&lti Morocco, about tho middle of November, i^B&at is, after the rainy season which begins in MBuly, the gummy juice exudes spontaneously jHbom tho trunk, and principal brunches of the '^Btpacia Ira 3. In about 15 days it thickens in j|Hita furrow, down which it runs, either in vergSlpiculav (or worm) shape, or commonly assuming IBfke form of oval and round tears, about the of a pigeon's egg-, of different colours, as |Bib.ey belong to the whito or red gum tree. |BAboufc the middle of December, the Moors enJBo*inp on the borders of tho forest, and the |Hb«rvest lasts six weeks. j^H; The gum is packed in very large sacks of BBeather and brought on the backs of bullocks camels to certain ports, where it is sold to |^Hh&' 4 French and English merchants. It is nutritious. During the time of harvest, j^Mjf the'JQurney,.nnd of the fair,'the Moors of tho' jßHesert live almost entirely upon it, and experiproves that six ounces of gum are sufficient Hgbr the support of a man 24 hours. HE ~ Gum is largely collected in Central Africa, gflSknd sent to the c^sts of the Mediterranean and nwie oceans. Gum Arabic and Senegal to the BJlraiuc of £120,000 aro exported ; other sorts of jngums to the value of £12,000, and resins and KJparnishes to the' value of £G000". From SeneKjlgambia the quantity of gum exported is given Hffct 25,000 quintals or cwts., of which 9000 go to ■■France, 6000 go to England, 4000 to Portugal the United States, and about 6000 arc gent j^R by the caravans of Fezzan and Morocco.to other B| parts of Central Africa. t There aro more than 130 species of the acacia BHn Australia, and from them exudes the purest B? gum Arabic. It is so plentiful that at particular B^ periods several pounds may be collected in some Bjr places in an hour or two. It possesses all the H|: good properties of the gum from Arabia, and is ■|- used successfully for the same purposes in the B| Leaving the true gums we come now to the Wk rosins. These. are either natural exudations or are obtained from some vegetable compounds by Hg.the aid of alcohol, in which they are generally B|-soluble, although totally; insoluble in water.' B| They are ibr the most part brittle, tasteless or Be insipid, and fusible at a moderate heat, soluble Hf- in 'the fixed- and volatile oils, and some in the B| muriatic and acetic acids. They have no smell, B^- except when they retain a portion of volatile oil, in which case they partake of the smell and B acid taste of that oil. Besins generally burn B[ with a strong yellow flame, emitting at the B same time a vast quantity of smoke. Dammer B affords a good example of the resins. B It is strange that of tho origin of, substances B at once so' valuable and so familiar to us so B little should be known. The sources of the B Dammer and many of the wood oils from SingaB pore and the Eastern Archipelago are little ml known, ijtt are the ~ copals, the ' auime,, the tm myrrhs, sftd other valuable gums and resins f from Africa, Zanzibar, &c. well defined.-------1 Colophony, the ordinary resin of commerce, is j the residuum remaining in tho body of the still \ after common toirpentine has beea submitted to ; distillation for the manufacture of the oil of j turpentine of commerce, or spirit of turpentine. r The black resin or colophony, is the cooled i brittle mass in the state in which it leaves the still j the amber, or yellow coloured, is tho same : rosin mixed with about one-eighth part of water while it a* yet fluid. . . _- X, ; -' Large quantities of resin oil, or"pine oil, as it m i$ generally oalled, are made in the metropolis B and in tho neighbourhood of Liverpool, Hull, m Bristol and" Glasgow, and it is employed in the m manufacture of gresiso for lubricating the bear- ■ ings of heavy machinery, railway waggoiis, &c. B It' is much used in Franco for the manufacture E of printing ink, and hence a principal source of m tho unpleasant odour of some of the French ■, newspapers. About 23,000 tons of resin are I -annually imported, of which- the' bulk comes X from America, and a little from the Haiise ■ towns. X Ono of tho^ mosfe important olco-resins in a ■. commercial point of view is turpentine, of which R we import, 17,000 to 25,000 tons por annum, m almofst exclusively, from the United States. ■ Dammer^ is the Eastern name for a kind of n indurated pitch or turpentine, exuding sponm tancously from various trees indigeiioua U) most m of tho Indian - Islands. The principal species m. -are Dainara Australis (Don), the Kauri treo of J^ .New Zealand, and D. Orientalis, the pitch tree

of Amboyna. The trees yield the Dammcr in amazing quantity, and generally without tho necessity of making incisions. It exudes through the hark, and is either found adhering to the trunk or branches in large lumps, or in lumps on the ground under the trees. As these , often grow near the sea side, or on the hanks of rivers, the dammcr is frequently floated away, and collected in distant places as drift. It is exported in large quantities to Bengal and China, and is used for all the purposes to which we apply pitch, but principally in the bottoms of ships. About 200,000 bundles of dainmer are annually exported from Siam. Dainmer fetches from 26a. to 335. per cwt. in the London market, , 100 to 300 cwt. of dammer and resin are annually exported from Ceylon. Most of the Eucalyptus genus in Australia furnish gums in abundance, particularly the red, spotted, and white gum, the iron and stringy bark, and other-trees.' It exudes" both spontaneously, and in large quantities when incisions have been made in the trunk, more particularly after rain. It is seen in masses upon the trunk, but its particles have so little tenacity that when in a concrete form any attempt to detach them from the entire lump fails, and it crumbles immediately into innumerable fragments. This gum resin has a strong' astringent quality, and is one of the varieties of * the kind used in commerce. At first it is of the consistence of a -very strong syrup, and immediately after rain may be seen flowing from an incision "or cleft in the tree very abundantly, being then of a .beautiful bright red colour, becoming of a dark shining red, and hardening by exposure to the air. . ' > ' . - The Angophora lancelota, or appletree of the colonists (a genus allied to that or Eucalyptus) also yields ,a dark and astringent gum from its trunk and branches. A gum as fine as amber exudes from the stem of a Macra Zamia in Australia. , : .

,jrhe Kaurie Gum of commerce is the produce of Dammaris Australia. For a long time it was much neglected, and the shipments made to thfe market did not repay the cost of its collection in the colony. The Americans, however, purchased it readily at first for £16 to £20 the ton,, and it was used by- them as a substitute, for copal in the manufacture of varnish. From 14 to 17- tons come'in annually'to Liverpool,'and within, the last year or two it has been in great favour in the London market, and larger supplies are coming forward. In 1851, 16^ tons were shipped from the port of Auckland ; - and in 1852, 107^ tons. This resin may he obtained in any quantity in the northern districts of New Zealand, ranging from 20 miles south of Auckland to the North Cape. The Kauri pine grows to a gigantic size. The gum resin exudes from it, and bears some resemllance to the dripping of a wax candle in the wind. It is' now in demand for the manufacture of varnish and other purposes, and it is found in masses of several pounds weight. The Kaurie gum, though clearly the produce of this tree, is dug from the ground in quarters where no traces of trees now exist. The gum-diggers probe the soil with long iron spikes, and extract the gum thus indicated from ■ generally a couple of feet below the surface. These pieces of gum are probably the relics of primeval forests which have disappeared long ago. The resin streams copiously from the stumps of the trees which have been felled, covering them with an appearance like wax, in tho air. Botany Bay gum is a yellow resinous exudation from the Xanthorrhoea Hastilis, and other species of the grass tree of Australia, which were genetically named by Swartz, from this peculiarity. It is darker th.tn gamboge, and less uniform in appearance, anl not entirely soluble in alcohol. It has been used medicinally, to unite the edges of wounds, and in the form of tincture, with opium, in dysentery and diarrhoea, and also forms the b;we of a cement. This resin contains benzoin and ciniuvmie tU-'ids. Another species of tho-samo Jamily, X. AustvaKs, furnishes a more-brittle resin, of a brilliant dark rod colour, known in tho colony «!S " bluckboy gum," Tlicso resins are spoken highly of aa useful for varnish, andsul;sutuU*s lor shelve. The grass tree is one grejt olwrnet eristic of the scenery and of tho vegetation of Australia. It puts ouo in mind of v tall "black nutiw, with a spear in his braid, ornamented with a tuft of rushes. On the spear is found nn excellent clear transparent gum, and from the lowo:* part of the treo oozts a black gum, whioS in:tke^ a powerful cement, used by tho n.ilivos for listening stone heads on their hammers. This gum resiu may

be obtained in inexhaustible quantities. CaptWray, K.E., submitted a report to tho local authorities of Western Austria last year, on the manufacture of illuminating gas from,the Xanthorrhcea, at one-third the expense of lighting with oil or candle*. The plant grows in abundance all over tho colony, and is composed of a core of hard fibry pith, about half of it* whole diameter, round which there is a layer of resin, varying from half to one inch or more in thickness, which forma the connection between the leaves and the core. Between these leave*, and also adhering to and covering them, fa ft considerable quantity of resin; resin also exude* in large lumps from the sides of the plant.. Method of obtaining the material.—ln thft firifc instance, the leaves and resin were separated from the core by breaking up the plant with an axe, and sifting the resin from the leaves, but i\ was found by experience that as much gas was obtained from an equal weight of the leavesand resin together as from the resin alone. The. quantity of resin obtained from an average sized ','blackboy" was about 55 lbs. weight. Ibis was collected easily at the rate of 5 lbs. per hoar by, a person having for his tools an axe and a sieve. Should the resin be collected for export, I am satisfied that by proper arrangement of crushers and sieves, a labourer at 4s. per diem (the colonial rate) conld collect at least one hundred weight per diem, enabling the resin to be brought, to market, at ITreeraantle, for £4 per ton, the ton weight measuring 46 cubic feet when pressed. - The quantity of pure gas obtained by Captain. Wray's experiments was at least four cubic feet to the pound of resin and leaves, but mucb. more might be obtained by a more complete apparatus. A cartload of the plants; eight in number, weighed 628 lbs. This core is very good fuel when mixed with other wood. The specific gravity of the gas is 888. The products of the distillation are gas, tar, and coke. The tar obtained was about one quart for every ten pounds, and thin, when re-distilled, gave- 8 per cent, fluid ounces of naphtha, and 20' per cent, of a sweet spirituous non-inflammable liquor. The coke remaining was about one quarter of the original weight, and with' other fuel barns welL The coke of the leaf has a bright- shining appearance, and when -ground with, oil is a very ' good substitute for lamp black in paint. The gas'hasa sia&H somewhat "similar to coal - gas, not nearly so offensive, but sufficiently strong to make any escape immediately perceptible. Its illumination power appears to, be very superior to coal gas, and its light very" white.' Captam WrayTs of opinion that when the production of the gas from the resin of the XanthWliEga is conducted with suitable apparatus, tlie cost- per annum will be materially reduced, so far, indeed that.the resin may become a large_ and profitable export from the colony to places which, are either not lit at all, or lit with oil." - Among these may be enumerated Singapore. Hongkong, Melbourne and Adelaide. The , supply is, I may say, unlimited, and even where it is so, it would be advantageous 1 to get rid of the plant from all the land fit for cultivation.:' Should, however, it be found that the plant was likely to get- scarce, the resin might be obtained by tapping. The gum resin of the New Zealand flax (phormium tenax) is admirably adapted for sealing letters, and, when remittances are enclosed, is frequently made use of by the colonists for that purpose. It is insoluble either in Avater or spirit, and so thoroughly penetrates the envelope as to ~ become part and parcel of it, nor is it possible to get at tlie contents of a letter so sealed/ ' v

The elastic gums are among the most- important and generally useful that come into commerwe, and although at present confined to tvp varieties, there is no reason "why additions slionldnoi.be made to the list, and .investigation promoted to elicit the comparative value of others. The rapid progress of the submarine telegraph, setting' aside other commercial uses of guttn percha, loudly calls for fresh supplies. If no other purpose h:wl been subserved by this Indian gum than tJinfcoi* on«isini» tiie u'l^niph wires, mankind would have reason to lo eminently grateful to the discoverers and to the Society of Arts for Uio raward' and pul'lieity" -given to its merits. \Vo can all recollect when the o;i7y u?es to which India rubber \vas spplitol Ayas to rub out pencil murks and make trap-»baUs for ioys, but now it is wado into shoes and huts, caps and cloaks, f».>ot-balis and purses, ribbons anU. cushions, boats, be*.l^» tents and bags: into po?vtw»s for pushing unnio« across rivers, and into vaweU

for liftiag.ships.over skoals. It Ls also applied to a variety* pt* "otter uses and purposes^ the mere enumeration of which would be. tedious; New applications' of it are indeed continually being made. .. • An elastic gum resin from .an Australian Ficus was shown at Paris, in the New South Wales collection, in small tears of a dingy appearance, which might prove useful. A large portion dissofves in warm linseed oil, but spirits of wine does not *act so readily on it. Jiy justification it becomes tenacious and bleaches thoroughly. ' ■ .-',.., c There are one or two imported articles ot commerce, which, though not strictly gums and resins, but more properly inspissated extracts, deserve a passing notice: these are the Kinos imported for manufacturing arid medicinal use. The Society of Arts'early stimulated enquiry and investigations into these products, for the use of the tanner, dyer, &c. s and in 1841 the gold medal was awarded to Dr,'Howison, for certain useful extracts, and in 1842, -Messrs. Pitchley and Wood; of Van-Diemen's Land, also received the -Society's €eres medal for other extracts. The "genuine gum kino of commerce is the natural exudation of Plerocarpes marsupiura, an forms an article of export to the extent of a fewtons from the Malabar coast. Gum Butea, from Eutea frondosa, furnishes the Bengal kino nearly equal to the preceding. ■ 'Tlie specimens I have -seen are quite identical with the ordinary kino of commerce. Australian kino is obtained from the ironbark tree,-a species of eucalyptus. Jamaica kino from "the Cocoloba uvifera.