14 
Mr. W. Elliott’s Account 
III. A ccount of the Poma Sodomitica, or Dead-Sea Apples. 
By Walter Elliot, Esq. M. E. S. 
[Read August3, 1835.] 
(Plate 3, fig. 1—5.) 
I have the honour to forward to the Entomological Society specimens 
of the Dead-Sea apples, and of an insect found therein, from the 
country beyond the Jordan. I also observed it growing plentifully 
on the different species of dwarf oaks in the Troad. I find the 
following memorandum made at the time : — “ Among the trees” 
(in the forest between Ein Jerah and Adjeloon in the Hauran) 
“was one called Sajar el Fusli ( 1 j ; on which we found 
what we conceived to be the true Dead-Sea apple described by 
Strabo. The Arabs told us to bite it, and laughed when they saw 
our mouths full of dry dust. It is about the shape and size of a 
small fig, of a dark reddish purple colour, with rows of small thorns 
in the upper end ; it seemed not to be a fruit, though called so by 
the Arabs, but was attached artificially to the branches of this and 
another sort of tree. The inside was full of a snuff-coloured spongy 
substance, crumbling into dust when crushed. The less matured 
ones were green and spongy inside, and unctuous to the touch 
without. Most were perforated with a small hole. This and the 
mode of their attachment, and the fact that they contained no seeds, 
indicate them to be the w r ork of an insect. The Arabs describe 
another excrescence on the same tree of a yellowish colour called 
Afs, which I believe to be the same excrescence in a less 
mature state.” The insects sent herewith came out of the excre- 
scences now forwarded on their way to England, and were found 
among the cotton in which they were packed. 
The Mala insana, Poma sodomitica, or apples of the Dead-Sea, 
beautiful and tempting to the eye, but crumbling to dust and bitter 
ashes at the touch, — have been the subject of much controversy 
amongst travellers in the East and naturalists. Some authors, 
indeed, as Riland, Maundrell, and Shaw, have doubted the existence 
of this vegetable production, probably regarding it as one of the 
inventions of that poetical fancy which so greatly abounds in the 
works of Persian and other eastern writers. Its existence has, 
