126 Linnean Society. [March 4, 



Dr. Nicholson proceeds to state that he met with the Googul plant 

 for the first time in 1832 on the Hills of Balmeer, in the Chotee 

 Thur or Little Desert, on taking and sacking which town large 

 quantities of the gum were found in several of the Banyan houses. 

 The bush is also plentiful about Joolmaghur, thirteen miles south- 

 west from Balmeer ; and the author has observed it on the Kulinjur 

 Hills in Parkur, as well as on those of several parts of Kutch and 

 Wangeer. Having been shipwrecked in 1836 on the southern coast 

 of Arabia, about 200 miles east of Cape Furtash, and being carried 

 by the Arabs to the town of Geda, about three miles distant from 

 the coast, he observed that large quantities of the gum Googul, 

 there called Aflatoon, were brought to Geda by the Bedouins from the 

 interior, where he was informed that the tree producing it was very 

 plentiful, and that the gum is annually carried thence to Mocha on 

 camels, and exported from Mocha to Bombay and other places. He 

 subsequently found the Googul bush on the hills of Yemen, and in 

 1841 on the hills above Wankaneer in Kattiawar. The gum is 

 chiefly used as a frankincense ; but the natives of Guzerat, and pro- 

 bably of other provinces where the tree is found, collect and bruise 

 the recent berries and twigs, boiling the juice out in cauldrons, and 

 having mixed it with their chunam (lime), to which it imparts in- 

 creased tenacity, commence all their dwellings with lime thus mixed, 

 it is said from a religious motive. The gum is found most abun- 

 dantly after the rains, when it is collected in pieces as it exudes 

 from the tree, and is often very dirty from the careless way in which 

 it is gathered, being mixed with the bark and twigs, and sometimes 

 even with the subjacent soil. The harder and nearly transparent 

 drops are picked out by the Banyan merchant, and fetch a higher 

 price than the rest. 



The author states that he is indebted to the late Dr. Charles Lush, 

 F.L.S., Superintendent of the Honourable East India Company's 

 Botanical Gardens at Darpoorie, who in 1842, from the sketches and 

 specimens then in the author's possession, identified the plant as the 

 Amyris Kataf of Forskahl, and assisted in identifying the gum with 

 the Bdellium of the ancients. He believes that if at all known to 

 Roxburgh, it must be under the names of Amyris nana or of Bos- 

 wellia. 



The paper concluded with a description of the plant, and with 

 some remarks on the geological character of the localities in which 

 it is found ; and was accompanied by a sketch of a branch, and by 

 specimens of the gum in its pure and mixed states. 



