NAT. ORDER. — LUGUMNOS.E. 149 



scattered prickles beneath, like the main rachis, which is elegantly 

 curved ; kajlcts very minute and delicate, ajjparently smooth and 

 naked, but through the lens minutely and irregularly puberulous, es- 

 pecially at the edges ; they close up and lose all their beauty about 

 four or five o'clock in the afternoon ; the spikes (not heads) of flowers 

 are short and oblong-, pale ochre-yellow, produced four or five together 

 from the axils of the upper leaves, which become less and less devel- 

 oped towards the ends of the branches, so as to form a long', irregular 

 sort of a terminal, leafy, compound, branched panicle ; slightly fra- 

 grant ; jicdides, half to three quarters of an inch long, round, unarmed, 

 densely fulvo-pubcscent ; spikes oblong, abbreviate, and about half an 

 inch long ; calt/.v very minutely pubescent, in five shallow segmets like 

 the corolla, both pale green ; stamens very numerous ; antliers simjjle ; 

 seeds numerous, ten to twelve, rather large, flattened, but convex in 

 the middle. 



Though the flowers of this plant are not remarkably conspicuous, it 

 is impossible to conceive of anything more graceful and elegant than 

 the thick tufted, feathery foliage, or the extreme delicacy and symme- 

 try of its parts. The pod and seed are singularly large in proportion 

 to the rest of the plant. 



This is the shrub which yields the gum-arabic of the shops, and 

 succus acacice. According to Hasselquist, the Arabs call it c/uisad. 

 The gum is gathered in vast quantities from the trees or shrubs grow- 

 ing in Arabia Petreea, near the north bay of the Red Sea, at the foot 

 of Mount Sinai. This gum is called by the dealers 77m?- or T/107; 

 which is the name of the harbor in the north bay of the Red Sea, 

 thereby distinguishing it from gum-arabic. The gum-thur is also more 

 pellucid and white, whereas gum-arabic is of a brown or dirty color, 

 and generally opaque. 



Gum-arabic is a concrete juice which exudes from various species 

 of Acacia, but especially from Acacia vera, Acacia Arabic, and Aca^- 

 cia Senegal, natives of the sandy deserts of Africa, Arabia, and other 

 parts of Asia. It either exudes spontaneously or from incisions made 



