BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 125 
coast by the name of Swmgle. The Acacia which yields this gum is 
generally a small shrub of a dry and withered appearance ; occasionally 
however it shoots out into a tree of from twenty to thirty feet high. 
The Somalis on the north-east coast of Africa collect the gum during 
the months of December and January. Long incisions are made in the 
stem and branches, from which the juice flows, and when dry is removed. 
After the gum of a district has been gathered, it is sewn up in goat- 
skins, and brought on camels’ backs to the great Barbara fair, or to 
some of the small settlements on the coast, and thence shipped for Aden 
and India. Three descriptions of the gum, styled severally Felick, Zeila, 
and Barbara, are exported from the Somali coast. 1, Felick gum is 
collected chiefly by the Margartain Somalis and those who inhabit the 
district of Gardaf and Cape Gardafui. None of this quality, which 
is esteemed the best, finds its way to Aden, but is mostly shipped to 
India. This is about 25 rupees the hundredweight in the Bombay 
market. 2, Zeila gum, so called from the port of that name. 3, Bar- 
bara gum, from the district of Barbara. Zeila gum sells at 15 and Bar- 
bara gum for 13 rupees the hundredweight in the Bombay bazaar. 
(Are these from one or from three species of Acacia ?—Ep.) 
Myrru.—This Gum-resin, sometimes called Murr by the Arabs, 
but more commonly in this district by its Indian name Heera Ból, is 
collected in great quantities by the Soumalis in the north-east part 
of Africa, and in the neighbourhood of Hurrur, further south. Small 
quantities of the best description of Myrrh have been lately collected 
in a district forty miles to the east of Aden, and brought hither for sale 
by the Soumalis, and this will doubtless soon increase. Four hundred 
and fifty hundredweight of Myrrh passed through the Aden Custom- 
house last year, and the selling price is 93 rupees the 28 lbs. (Mr. 
Hanbury adds the remark, that two kinds of Myrrh are sent by Mr. 
Vaughan, evidently the product of different plants: one labelled Somali 
or African Myrrh, the Turkey myrrh of commerce ; the other that 
which is produced forty miles from Aden; but nothing is said of the 
plants yielding either.) p 
Bissa Bór (Arabie, Hebbhakhada of the Somalis).—This is another 
gum-resin collected by the Somalis on the opposite coast. It resem- 
bles the Myrrh already described. My impression is that the tree 
affording it is unknown to Europeans. It fetches at Aden 21 rupees 
per maund (of 28 Ibs.), and is sent to India and China and given to 
