Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstra21221890roya).pdf/389

 the mountains and at the roots of tall trees. He compares it with the Chinese plant now called Fuhling (Pachyma Cocos). This is a well known Chinese drug of a very similar nature to our Tiger's Milk, and which is probably also the same as the Tuckahoe or Indian Bread of North America. I obtained a specimen of the Chinese Fuhling in the Singapore market. It is sold in the drug shops, and appears to have some repu- tation as a medecine. The plant differs somewhat from the Susu Rimau, and I should imagine is a different species. It is more regular in shape, resembling a large truffle externally with a cracked brown skin darker coloured than that of the Tiger's Milk. The interior is a little more mealy in texture, but perhaps this is due to the age of the specimen, and the rind is thicker. In section the microscope shows that there are the fungus threads as in the Susu Rimau, but that the glo- bose cells are represented in great measure by amorphous granular masses. The white substance of Pachyma is stated by Professor BERKELEY to consist of masses of pectine traversed by mycelium threads, and the whole thing to be of the nature of a sclerotium, that is to say, a fungus in a resting state. Mr. G. MURRAY, in a paper read before the Linnean Society in 1886, described a sclerotium upon which a Lentinus was growing somewhat as in RUMPHIUS' picture which was brought from Samoa in the Fiji Islands by Mr. WHITMER. This he thought at first might be identical with the Pachyma. Microscopic examination, however, showed no pectine in the Samoan plant, which consisted merely of a mass of fungus threads, and in fact was a typical Sclerotium.

Our plant is, however, somewhat more than this, as the proportion of fungus threads to the white globose cells is so very small. It is evidently more closely allied to Pachyma, but I think is quite distinct from that specifically and may indeed be RUMPHIUS' long-lost Tuber Regium.

The Bukit Mandai mass was partially encrusting a piece of rotten timber, and from it apparently grew a stalked Polyporus of large size. I thought at first that I had got hold of the fungus that produced the Susu Rimau, and was much surprised to find it was a Polyporus, and not a Lentinus, but a section