day of his death, has sprung up, grown and borne fruit.  The corpse, till then kept above ground among the living, is now, with these ears of rice, committed to the earth, like the grain six months before; and thus the hope is emblematically expressed that, as a new life arises from the seed, so another life shall begin for man after his death.  During this time the corpse is kept in the house, enclosed in a coffin made of the hollowed trunk of a Durion, and the whole space between the coffin and the body is filled with pounded camphor, for the purchase of which the family of the deceased Rajah frequently impoverish themselves.  The camphor oil is collected by incisions at the base of the trunk, from which the clear balsamic juice is very slowly discharged.

In Sumatra the best camphor is obtained in a district called Barus, and all good camphor bears that local name.  It appears that the tree is cut down to obtain the gum and that not in one tenth of the trees is it found.  Barus camphor is getting scarce, as the tree must be destroyed before it is ascertained whether it is productive or not.  About 800 piculs are annually sent to China.  The proportion between Malay and Chinese camphor is as eighteen to one; the former is more fragrant and not so pungent as the latter.

Nine hundred and eighty-three tubs of camphor were exported from Java in 1843; 625 bales were imported in 1843, the produce of the Japanese empire; and 559 piculs exported from Canton in 1844.

The price of unrefined camphor in the Liverpool market in July, 1853, was L4 to L4 10s. the cwt.  There have been no imports there direct in the last two years.

Camphor (says Dr. Ure) is found in a great many plants and is secreted in parity by several laurels; it occurs combined with the essential oils of many of the labiacae; but it is extracted for manufacturing purposes only from the Laurus Camphora, which abounds in China and Japan, as well as from a tree which grows in Sumatra and Borneo, called in the country kapur barus, from the name of the place where it is most common.  The camphor exists, ready formed, in these vegetables between the wood and the bark; but it does not exude spontaneously.  On cleaving the tree Laurus Sumatrensis (Qy.  Dryobalanops Camphora), masses of camphor are found in the pith.  The wood of the Laurus is cut into small pieces and put, with plenty of water, into large iron boilers, which are covered with an earthen capital or dome, lined within with rice straw.  As the water boils, the camphor rises with the steam, and attaches itself as a sublimate to the stalks, under the form of granulations of a grey color.  In this state it is picked off the straw and packed up for exportation to Europe.”—­(” Dictionary of Arts and Manufactures.”)

The price of camphor at Canton in July, 1850, was from fourteen to fifteen dollars per picul.