Plants of Marucco. 41.1 



Since writing my letter, I have perused again the whole 

 passage on the subject in Pliny, and am much struck with this 

 sentence: — " Aiicorarius mons vocatur citerioris Mauretania?, 

 qui laudatissimam detlit citrum, jam exhaustus." 



Knowing how much the Latins, as the Greeks their prede- 

 cessors in this careless custom, corrupted the proper names 

 found in tongues foreign to their own, I am disposed to think 

 that the etymon of this Latinized term Aiicorarius may be found 

 in the name of a stream and valley, called by the present in- 



habitants A'ncor £-i\ \ (Wad A'ncor), which an honest and 



intelligent mountaineer in my service, who is a native of the 

 region near Melilia, describes as having its course at about 

 three days' journey on this side that place; and that, where 

 the stream enters the sea, a small island is seen at a short di- 

 stance from the shore. This would appear to me to be a river, 

 for which I have not indeed seen any name set down, but 

 which is marked in the best charts as entering the Bay of Al- 

 hucemas, which is near the 4th degree of W. longitude; and, 

 as a further coincidence with the best chart, my informant 

 seems to agree with our geographers in the relative positions 

 of the districts of Bockoya and Badis with that stream. 



The Wad A'ncor is said to be an ample stream that runs 

 through a broad valley, descending from high mountains, on 

 which he believes there is much timber — much he says that 

 he knows to have been cut in that district, but he never was 

 upon those hills. He does not know the name of any moun- 

 tain in his country of Reef that resembles the same word 

 Ancor. 



At the sources, nevertheless, of this stream I would presume 

 to place that ancient habitat of the laudatissimce citri, which is 

 described by Pliny as being in Mauretania cilcrior. 



My informant says he has seen forests of the Arar in his 

 native mountains; that many of these trees are in girth more 

 than two full-sized men can encircle with their arms, at the 

 height of a man from the ground. This, however, would not 

 seem to give more than about four- feet in diameter. Their 

 height he describes as enormous, but cannot give a definite 

 idea of that. 



Although the hills above the Wad A'ncor be now well 

 clothed with large timber, the expression of "jam exhaustus," 

 which in his time Pliny may have applied to that region, does 

 not I think supply any fair objection to my theory ; particu- 

 larly when it would appear that the neighbouring coasts were 



