180 HANBURY ON TWO INSECT-PllODUCTS TROM PERSIA. 



The entomological question being so far disposed of, I may 

 be permitted a few remarks upon the properties which have 

 obtained for Trehala a place among drugs and dietetic substances. 



The first author who gives any account of the substance is 

 Father Ange, who, in his ' Pharmacopoea Persica*,' describes it 

 in the following terms : — " Est autem istud medicamentum ve- 

 luti tragea ex nucleo pistacii integro confecta ; nam revera sac- 

 charum istud exterius corrugatum et agglomeratum adhseret cuidam 

 nucleo, in quo non fructus, sed vermiculus quidam nigricans 

 Persice C-hezouheh bombycis instar reconditur et moritur." 



Father Ange also states that the substance is called in Per- 

 sian ScJiakar tigal (^A\kJj Jj^)) literally Sugar of nests ; but 

 his Arabic names, Schakar el ma-asdher (^uoc<J! J^) ^"^^ 

 Saccar el ascJiaar, apply to an entirely different substance, namely 

 to a saccharine matter exuded, after the punctures of an insect, 

 from the stems of Calotropis procera, B. Br.f , of which plant he 

 gives a quaint but tolerably characteristic description. 



Mr. Loftus, who obtained the specimens which he presented to 

 the British Museum, at Kirrind in Persia, in September, 1851, 

 gives as the Persian name of the cocoons SheTc roukeh — a term, 

 probably, the same as the " C-Jiezoukek'' (a misprint ?) of Father 

 Ange, but the signification of which I have not been able to 

 discover. 



Another notice of the same substance, with a figure, is briefly 

 given in Dr. Honigberger's ' Thirty-five Tears in the East' 

 (Lond. 1852, vol. ii. pp. 305-6), where we read that Manna 

 teeghul or SJiukure teegJial, which are certain insect-nests of a 

 hard texture, rough on the outside, smooth within, about half an 

 inch in length, and of a whitish colour, are imported into Lahore 

 from Hindostan. 



M. Bourlier published in 1857 an interesting note on the same 

 substance J, which has been followed by M. Guibourt's commu- 



* Pharmacopoea Persica ex idiomate Persico in Latinum couversa. Lutet. 

 Paris., 1681, p. 361. 



t This saccharine substance is noticed by Avicenna as Zuccarum alhusar 

 (Lib. ii. Tract, ii. cap. 756, ed. Valgr. Venet. 1564), and also by Matthiolus 

 (Comm. in Lib. ii. Diosc. cap. 75). It is likewise referred to by Endlicher 

 (Enchiridion Botanicum, p. 300), Royle (Illustr. of the Bot. of the Himalayan 

 Mountains, vol. i. p. 275), Merat and De Lens (Diet, de Matifere Medicale, 

 t. i. p. 467), &c. 



:|: Revue Pharmaceutique de 1856, par Dorvault, p. 37. 



