POOH, Puhn, or Peon, a commercial term, de rived from the Malay language, but applied by natives of India and Europeans to the timber of several distinct trees used for masts and spars. Dr. Roxburgh says, Calophyllum angustifolium, a native of Penang and of countries eastward of the Bay of Bengal, yields the straight spars com monly called Poon, which in those countries are used for the masts of ships, and Drs. Gibson and Cleghorn were also of this opinion. It occurs in Penang, Coorg, Mysore, Canara, and along the ghats northwards to Sawuntwari, but rarely of any great size beyond the line of the Nilcoond ghat. It is a magnificent tree when growing in the ravines of the southern ghats of Canara. In habit and appearance, Dr. Gibson says, it is totally distinct from C. inophyllum. At the Madras Exhibition of 1855, Dr. Cleghorn in the Jury Reports, noticing Sterculia feetida as a large tree in Mysore and the western coast of the Peninsula, adds that it is one of the trees believed to furnish the smaller poon spars, and Major Drury, in Useful Plants, repeats this. Calophyllum
inophyllum grows in the western parts of Ceylon, where it is employed for the masts and cross sticks of Yettra dhonies and fishing-boats and poles of bullock carts. A cubic foot of it, there, weighs 40 lbs. In the alpine forests it attains a great size, and furnishes the poon spars so valuable for shipping. The weight of a cubic foot of the following poon trees is stated as under :— Calophyllum inophyllum, C. tomentosum, 32-38 lbs. 26-45 lbs. C. Wightianum, . 45 „ C. polyanthum, 38-44 „ Dillenia pentagyna,45-70„ C. spectabile, . 38-39 „ Sterculia fcetida, . 28 ,, The impossibility at present of tracing the ticular trees noticed by Edye under his description of the poen of commerce, reduces the value of his observations.