The camphor of Sumatra is procured from the stem of a large tree, Dryobalanops Camphora, Colebrook; D. aromatica, Graertner.  It is secreted in crystalline masses naturally into cavities of the wood.  It supplies this camphor only after attaining a considerable age.  In its young state it yields, however, by incision, a pale yellow liquid, called the liquid camphor of Borneo and Sumatra, which consists of resin and a volatile oil having a camphorated odor.

An account of this tree, and of the mode of procuring the peculiar and high-priced camphor which it yields, is given by Dr. Junghuhn, who has travelled lately in Sumatra, and Prof.  De Vriese, of Leyden, in the “Nederlandsch Kruidkundig Archief” for 1851.  An abstract of the memoir, translated into English by Miss De Vriese, is published in “Hooker’s Journal of Botany " for February and March 1852:—­

The Dryobalanops is a gigantic tree, rising for fifty or even a hundred feet above those which compose the chief mass of the forests where they grow, just as the steeples of the churches appear above the roofs of the houses in a town.  The trunks of the full-grown trees are from 7 to 10 feet in diameter at the very base, and from 5 to 8 feet higher up; they rise to the height of 100 or 130 feet, and their ample crown is from 50 to 70 feet in diameter.  The tree has a limited range, being confined to the seaward slope of the mountains of southwestern Sumatra, most abundant on the lower slopes and the outlying hills of the alluvial plain, and extending in latitude from 1deg. 10m. to 2deg. 20m.  N., and perhaps further to the north.  Camphor oil occurs in all the trees, and is most abundant in the younger branches and leaves.  The solid camphor is found only on the trunks of older trees, especially in fissures of the wood, and in smaller quantity than is generally supposed.  Colebrooke, and authors who have copied from him, assert that camphor is found in the heart of the tree in such a quantity as to fill a cavity of the thickness of a man’s arm, and that a single tree yields about eleven pounds.  The price of this camphor, which at Padang sells for about 340 dollars per hundred weight, suffices to show that the account is much exaggerated.  The camphor occurs only in small fissures, from which the natives, having felled the trees and split up the wood, scrape it off with small splinters or with their nails.  From the oldest and richest trees they rarely collect more than two ounces.  After a long stay in the woods, frequently of three months, during which they may fell a hundred trees, a party of thirty persons rarely bring away more than 15 or 20 pounds of solid camphor, worth from 200 to 250 dollars.  The variety and price of this costly substance are enhanced by a custom which has immemorially prevailed among the Battas, of delaying the burial of every person who during his life had a claim to the title of Rajah (of which each village has one) until some rice, sown on the