his
dominions as his personal property; nevertheless, many are said to be
surreptitiously taken out of the country by Malayan or Chinese traders.
A remarkably fine specimen in the possession of the Sultan is valued at
$900; small ones may be worth no more than $40, but the value
increases very rapidly with the size of the concretion. Though it is
confidently believed that the bezoars work wonderful cures in diseases
of the bowels and of the respiratory organs, the natives value them
chiefly as aphrodisiacs, this action being secured either by wearing
them or by taking them in solution.28
The Chinese work entitled P'ing-chou-k'o-t'an, by Chu Yü, written in the first quarter of the twelfth century, mentions the mo-so stone
(the bezoar) and states that it was worn in finger rings. Should anyone
have reason to suppose that he had taken poison, all he had to do in
order to escape any bad effects was to lick the bezoar-stone set in his
ring. The Chinese writer adds that it might thus be justly called "a
life preserver."29
The Dayaks of Borneo have a method for producing bezoars which they call guligas. This
is to shoot an animal with an unpoisoned arrow. When the wound heals,
there is often a hardening of the skin, which finally results in the
formation of a guliga. In some of these concretions the point of the arrow still remains. The guligas of natural formation are frequently found between the flesh and the skin of apes and porcupines.30
In the eighteenth century Valmont de Bomare reports that the bezoars of the hedgehog commanded the highest
* Skeat, " Malay Magic," London, 1900, pp. 274 sqq.
" Chau Ju-Kua, " Chu-fan-chi" ("A
Description of Barbarous Peoples "), trans, by Friedrich Hirth and W.
W. Rockhill, St. Petersburg, 1911, p. 16, and p. 90, note 7.
•Von Dewall, "Aanteekeningen omirent de Noordoostkust van Borneo;" Tijdschrift voor Ind. Taal. Land en Volk, voL iv, p. 436.
