Sandarac

Sandarac, or SANDARACH RESIN, is a friable, dry, almost transparent, tasteless, yellowish-white resin, which is imported from Mogador, Morocco. It is completely soluble in oil of turpentine, but not completely soluble in alcohol. When heated, or sprinkled on burning coals, it emits an agreeable balsamic smell. It exudes from the bark of the Sandarac tree (Callitris quadrivalvis), a native of the north of Africa, of the natural order Coniferae. The quantity of sandarac used is not great; it is employed in making varnish, and generally speaking for the same purposes as Mastic (q.v.). The Australian species also exude sandarac. The finely-powdered resin is rubbed, as Pounce, on the erasures of writing-paper, after which they may be written upon again without the ink spreading. The mottled butt-wood of the sandarac tree is highly balsamic and odoriferous, extremely durable and valuable for cabinet-makers. It fetched fabulous prices in Pliny's time. A current error is that the gum of the Juniper is identical with sandarac.