Botanical Description.--A tree, with leaves alternate, odd-pinnate, without stipules, bunched on the ends of the branches, with opposite, serrate leaflets. Flowers yellowish-white in panicles, compound, polygamous. Calyx bell-shaped, 5-toothed. Corolla, 5 petals. Stamens 10, free, in 2 series. Ovary inferior, 5-lobuled. Fruit, a globose, greenish-yellow drupe with numerous bony seeds. Habitat.--Everywhere in Luzon, Panay and Balabac. _Canarium commune_, L. (_C. album_ and _C. Luzonicum_, Blanco.) Nom. Vulg.--_Pili_, Tag.; _Java Almond Tree_, _East Indian Elemi_, Eng. Uses.--The ripe pili nut is edible and sold in confectioneries. It yields a fixed oil, an excellent sample of which was sent by the Manila pharmacist D. A. del Rosario to the Paris Exposition of 1889. "It is an oil very similar to oil of almond and owing to its physical properties may be used as a substitute for the latter for all the requirements of pharmacy. The only inconvenience connected with its use is the slight one that it solidifies at 3° C. It could furthermore be very advantageously used in the manufacture of fine grades of soap." (D. A. del Rosario.) The incised trunk exudes a gum-resin called _brea blanca_ (white pitch) in the Philippines and _elemi_ in Europe. Until recently it was not known in Europe what tree yielded the gum elemi, some authors stating that according to Blanco it was the resin of the _Icica abilo_, Blanco (_Garuga floribunda_, Decsne); it is not true, however, that Padre Blanco ever attributed such origin to that product or named his Icica the "pitch-tree." On the contrary in speaking of the Canarium, Blanco states that it yields a resin called "pili-pitch." I do not know the reason for this confusion of terms, but presume it to be due to imperfect knowledge of Spanish on the part of those who thus quote Blanco. Pili-pitch, or elemi, as they call it in Manila, is a substance existing in soft masses, slightly yellowish or gray, resembling old honey in appearance. Its odor is strong and agreeable, somewhat like that of lemon and turpentine. Its taste is acrid and bitter. The French pharmacist Meaujean demonstrated in 1820 that elemi contains two resins, one soluble in the cold, and the other in hot spirits of wine. Other chemists, among them Baup, Flückiger and Hanbury, have found elemi to be composed of a resinous substance and a colorless essential oil; the proportion of the latter Flückiger gives as 10% and further states that it is dextrogyrous. Sainte-Claire Deville found the essential oil levogyrous, a fact that emphasizes the probability of there being different products in the market bearing the name of elemi.