BALSAM OF MECCA. 20 
stamens are inserted under the annular, cup-shaped disc. The 
ovary is sessile, surmounted by a very short blunt style and a 
quadrilobed stigma. The berry is oval, smooth, containing a 
solitary seed. 
Guibourt finds that the second variety (B. Opobalsamum) only 
differs from the first named (B. Gileadense) in that its leaves are 
composed of one or two pairs of sessile leaflets, with an odd one *. 
These trees are very rare and difficult to cultivate. They have 
gradually disappeared from the countries where they were for- 
merly known to have grown. Thus, from Judea, where according 
to Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Pliny, Justin, and Strabo, they were 
in ancient times grown, they have, since many years, completely 
disappeared. In Egypt, where they were either obtained from 
Judea or Arabia, they were cultivated between the 11th and 16th 
or 17th centuries, in a place near Cairo called Matriya. This 
garden of Matriya was 7 “ feddans,” or more than 9 arpents, in 
extent +; it was enclosed by walls and guarded by Janisaries. 
Abd-ul-Latif, who lived from 1161 to 1231, described the extrac- 
tion of the balsam at the garden of Matriya near Cairo. He says 
that incisions are made through the bark down to the wood, the 
juice is scraped from the tree and preserved in bottles, which are 
buried in the earth for a time, and afterwards exposed to the sun 
until the balsam has separated from the impurities; it is then 
subjected to some secret process, after which it is stored in the 
King’s Treasury. 
At the time of the visit of Bélon to Cairo in 1550, notwith- 
standing that the trees in this garden had many times been 
renewed by importations from Mecca, there remained only 9 or 10 
trees, almost leafless, and no longer yielding balsam. The last 
tree died in 1615, through an inundation of the Nile. Therefore 
it is no longer Egypt or Judea which furnishes balsam of Mecca, 
but rather Arabia Felix, in the environs of Medina and Mecca, 
where the tree grows naturally, and where it has never ceased to 
exist. It is stated that the tree grows near Bederhunin, a village 
between Mecca and Medina, in a sandy, rocky soil, confined to a 
tract about a mile in length. 
Strabo alone, of all the ancient writers, has given an account of 
* Hist. des Drogues, ili. p. 506. 
+ ‘Relation de Egypte,’ traduite par Sylvestre de Sacy, Paris, 1810. 
