Pungent camphor is distilled from the wood of Camphora officinalis and many other drugs are taken from tropical trees, sometimes from the fruit, as from the cylindrical pods of the golden flowered Cassia fistula, or from those red and white nuts of Kola, which are so greatly sought by Africans that they pass from hand to hand as currency; or from the bark, as in the case of Cinchona, so long jealously guarded by its Andean discoverers; of the West Indian quassia (Picraena excelsa), a substitute for the Oriental Quassia amara; or the Jamaica dogwood (Piscidia erythrina); or of the win ter's bark (Dritnys Winter°.
Saponaceous materials are obtained from soap bark (Quillaia) and from the soapberry (Sapindus). Cocum butter is extracted from the seeds of Garcinia Indica; shea butter, used for food and illumination along the Niger, from the nuts of Bassia, a genus that is rich in oil-yielding species. Candlenuts (Aleurites moluccana) are so oily that they were formerly strung on grasses in Hawaii and burned as candles. The cohune palm (Attalea Cohune) and the African oil palm (Ekris Guineensis), among others, yield commercial oils, and wax is shaken or scraped from those two palms Copernicia and Ceroxylon. Ben oil, a favorite with perfumers, comes from the horseradish tree (Moringa).
Even the juices of tropical trees are utilized. South America boasts of the cow-tree (Galac trodendron utile), from which when gashed flows a quantity of thick white fluid, cream-like in consistency, and bearing a slight astringency in taste. The naseberry (Achras Sapota) secretes °chicle' gum, and a number of differ ent trees furnish that milky sap which hardens into rubbgr or guttapercha. The pigment gamboge is derived from the yellowish sap of Garcinia Morella.
An orange red dye, used for coloring dairy products, is obtained from the arils of annatto or achiote seeds (Bixa orellana); but more important dye-stuffs are the heartwood of fustic (Chlorophora tinctoria) tinting yellow; of Bra zilwood (Cesalpinia Brariliensss) dyeing red, and of the graceful logwood (Hematoxylon Campechianum) yielding fine blues and blacks. Logwood flowers profusely, and bees make one of the finest kinds of honey from the fragrant blossoms.
Cabinet woods are another commercial prod uct of the tropics that is very valuable. Sandal wood, camphorwood and cedar (Cedrela odor ata) are favorite materials for clothes-chests and boxes, since the aromatic and fragrant woods repel insects. Cabinet makers went to
the East for their hard sable ebony (Diospyros ebeneunt), for the blackwood (Dalbergia) so much used by the Chinese, for teak (Tectona grandis) for carving, and for the shimmering satinwood (Chloroxylon Swietenia); but South America and the West Indies have their satin-. woods (Fagan; and Simaruba), and also an ebony (Brya ebenum), besides rosewood and the peerless mahogany (Swietenia mohogoni) which seekers discover by climbing other trees to locate the mahogany by its delicately-cut pale foliage, among other methods. They also have the ale-brown wavy-grained yacca (Podo carpus), a conifer, and the mountain mahoe (Hibiscus elatus) vividly striped with green and white. In the Philippines the yellow or red dish heartwood of molave (Vitex), narra (Pterocarpus), tindalo (Pahudia rhomboidea) and the dark-brown walnut-like acle (Pithe colobiuns acle) are valued for furniture and cabinet making.
The wealth of the tropics in timber trees is scarcely realized or drawn upon. Some of the trees are so hard and heavy that carriage from their site is prohibited, even if their habi tat were not often in utterly inaccessible loca tions; and if they could be fetched away they would be too difficult to work with profit, or too limited in usefulness. On the other hand some tropical woods are surprisingly soft and light. The Lauan group of the Philippines may be compared to soft pine, being used for light construction and furniture. Ochroma, or balsa-wood (Ochroma lagopus) of the West Indies is so buoyant that it is used as a substitute for cork, and is said to be the lightest wood in the world; its relative, the silk cotton or ceiba (Ceiba pentandra), a huge tree regarded by negroes with much respect if not worship fully, is not much heavier. Its enormous boles, braced by those sinuous narrow-walled, but tressing roots that are so characteristic of many gigantic tropical trees, dominate open glades in the forest. They have been hollowed out for dug-out canoes by the natives, who made paddles, from the thin walls of the but tresses. The Moss° or a soft fibrous material surrounding the seeds, is more import ant than the timber, being used as an upholstery material called and as a moisture .defying, weightless padding for soldiers' bed ding in the trenches. It resembles the red silk cotton of the Eastern ((SimaP) (Bombax Maio baricum) of the same family.