383 



—at the rootstock soon after flowering and cover it in with a 

 sort of roof made of flat stones. Then they return after a while 

 to gather the copiously exuding resin, which is at first of a bright 

 and afterwards of a dirty yellow. It burns readily, leaving 

 Denind a not unpleasant smell ; it serves for lighting fires and, 

 made into candles, as a very poor illuminant. It is also a reputed 

 medicine, but unfortunately I was unable to learn of its applica- 

 tion. . . Under the name of 'fassiich ' it is an article of trade 

 ana is sent far, as, for instance, to Derna." The eastward distribu- 

 tion ot the plant is confirmed by Dr. Schweinfurth's discovery of 

 the plant at Badia, about 100 km. east of Bomba, where it was just 

 beginning to flower on the 10th of March,* and was known by th<- 

 Arabic name of Kalch. In connection with Taubert's account of 

 tne tapping of the root, I would refer in this place to a passage in 

 berapion s paragraph on ammoniakon,t where he says " on the 

 authority of Dioscorides" :— " Hec herba grece dicitur asios 

 cuius radix vulneratur egreditur lachrymus qui colligitur et 

 servatur." The gum obtained in the manner described by Taubert 

 would no doubt be of the "phyrama" kind (ammoniacum in 

 placentis). It is apparently at present quite unknown in Europe 

 and has, of course, never been analysed. There were, however, a 

 tew small drops of resin on the dry infructescences in the Her- 

 barium Boissier such as would be classed as ' thrausma ' (ammo- 

 niacum in lachrymis). They were of a deep yellow colour 

 resembling amber. I tasted one half of one of them'and burnt the 

 other. The taste was moderately bitter without any subsequent 

 addition of acridity, whilst the odour was decidedly stronger ami 

 pleasanter than that of burning Morocco Fashook. 



Thus we still have in the Gyrenaica, the home of the Ammo ■ 

 niakon of Dioscorides, a Ferula very much resembling, if not 

 identical with, Dioscorides' plant and producing a gum resin of 

 the same kind as that described by him. The plant and its 

 product go by the same name as the Morocco Ferula and its gum 

 resin, Kalch and Fashook. There is, therefore, no reason to doubt 

 the correctness of Dioscorides' account. The destructive method 

 of tapping may have contributed much to the reduction of the 

 area of his ammoniakon. It has, for instance, not been observed 

 by recent explorers in the neighbourhood of the site of the old 

 Ammon temple, where, almost more than anywhere else, it must 

 have been exposed to the danger of extirpation by the gum collector. 

 At the time when Ebn Baitar wrote, the Cyrenaica formed part ot 

 the Egyptian Ayyubi caliphate, and the "Egyptians" of whom he 

 says that they designate gum ammoniac by the name Kalch 

 ^ich is a l S o Ushaq,no doubt meant rather the Cyrenaiean 

 than the Moroccan gum although it is, of course quite possible 

 that they also received a certain quantity of the latter without 

 distinguishing clearly between them. It appears therefore ha 

 the terms Kalch and Ushaq (Fashook) became nomina generua 

 at a very early date, just as the name gum am moaiacum is used at 

 tne present day for at least three distinct umbelliferous gum resins. 



e Marmaricae, in Bull. Herb. 



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