206 DR. ROXBURGH ON THE GENUS AQUILARIA. 
suitable appellation for a ligneous substance, in which a diseriminative sign of its excel- 
lence is its specific gravity exceeding that of water. Grammarians have therefore given a 
different turn to the etymology of the word, as indicating a substance than which nothing 
is weightier, that is, more valuable*. I observe, nevertheless, among the Sanscrit syno- 
nyma for Aloe-wood, Laghí, properly signifying light. It is difficult to assign a satisfac- 
tory reason for this name. 
Other Sanscrit denominations which merit notice are, Crimija, signifying produced by 
insects, and Gandha-cashtha, fragrant wood. ' The first implies a notion, which is not an 
improbable one, that the conversion of the wood into an aromatic substance is occasioned 
by wounds of insects. The other corresponds in its import with the Arabic name Und, a 
term answering in sense, as in sound, to the English word wood, and applied emphatically 
by the Arabian physicians to the aromatic wood in question. 
Avicenna? has treated, under separate heads, of Udd (which his translator writes Haud) 
and Aghälujt, written in the Latin version Agalugen. But later authorities among the 
Arabian and Persian physicians concur in affirming that Aghaluji is the same with Ud, 
being its Greek denominationt. They clearly intend the Agallochon of Dioscorides $. 
It is not, therefore, right to derive Agallochum from the Arabie, since this, on the con- 
trary, is confessedly borrowed from the Greek. Neither is its origin to be sought in the 
Hebrew Ahalim and Ahaloth, as proposed by Salmasius|| since it is more obvious to de- 
duce it from the language of the country whence the drug was brought, and the Indian 
name guru, or with the Sanscrit pleonastie termination ca, Aguruca, is much nearer to 
the sound of the Grecian term. | 
It may be remarked by the way, that the Portuguese Pao de Aquila, as noticed by 
Rumphius, is an undoubted corruption either of the Arabie 4gAálují or of the Latin 
Agallochum, and it is, by a ludicrous mistake, that from this corruption has grown the 
name of Lignum Aquile, whence the genus of this plant now receives a botanic appellation, 
and which many authors have vai y attempted to distinguish from the Lignum Aloes 
and Calambac **. 
The generic and specific names of the plant then are both drawn from the same original 
term, a circumstance, however, not unprecedented in the Linnean nomenclature. 
* Commentators on the Amera-césha. 
T Quoted by Garcias, Hist. Aromat. p. 65, and Salmasius, Plinianæ Exercitationes, p- 1055. 
t ‘Tohfet úl muminín? and * Mekhzen úl adveyeh.’ $ Dioscorides, lib. i. cap. 21. 
|| Plinianze Exercitationes, p- 1054. From the same Hebrew word Salmasius deduces Aloe. Isidorus derives it from 
allar, a silly etymology, as Salmasius remarks. ; | 
S| Bauhin, Pomet, Lemery, &c. 
** A Malay name of the Aloe-wood, derived, according to the conjecture of Rumphius, from the Chinese Kilam. 
