When boiling water is poured over shavings of this wood a clear jelly, resembling tragacanth, is formed and becomes a thick viscid mass; iodine stains it brown, but not a trace of starch is indicated in it.
"Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia In Search of a Route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria (1848) by Lt. Col. Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell Kt. D.C.L. (1792-1855) Surveyor-General of New South Wales"
Thomas Mitchell
He taught me, in the presence of my new mother, how to fix it with some tragacanth gum, and I found myself exactly like my friend.
"The Memoires of Casanova, Complete The Rare Unabridged London Edition Of 1894, plus An Unpublished Chapter of History, By Arthur Symons"
Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
This is the reason why his colours have remained so fresh to the present day, and this should teach artists to recognise the injury that is done to pictures and works by retouching a secco things done in fresco with other colours, as is said in the theories, for it is an established fact that this retouching ages the painting, and the new colours which have no body of their own will not stand the test of time, being tempered with gum-tragacanth, egg, size, or some such thing which varnishes what is beneath it, and it does not permit the lapse of time and the air to purge what has been actually painted in fresco upon the soft stucco, as they would do had not other colours been superimposed after the drying.
"The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8)"
Giorgio Vasari
