166 Brigade-Surgeon J. E. T. Aitchison's Notes on Products 



for staves. The bark of the root is employed as a dye-stuff, 

 being crushed, and boiled in water. It is employed to colour 

 leather a dark, or maroon red. Some say the fruit when 

 ripe resembles a cherry, others that it is like a small plum. 

 I did not collect ripe specimens. 



Prunus Cerasus, Linn. EosACEiE. 



Variety a {Brandis. For. Flora, p. 193), Pruxus AvroM, 

 Linn. The sweet-cherry, gilds ; Arabic, klrds. A small 

 cultivated tree, not so common as the next, raised by grafts 

 only, yielding a fruit resembling our sweet white-heart cherry, 

 quite as fine, and very similar to the fruit of the same name 

 cultivated in Kashmir. There can be no doubt, I think, that 

 the name gilds is a corruption for the Arabic klrds, from the 

 Greek kerasion, which would point to this cultivated form 

 having been carried east, from Greece, to Arabia, Persia, 

 Afghanistan, and Kashmir. 



Variety b (Brandis. For. Flora, p. 193), Prunus Cerasus, 

 Linn. The sour, or bitter cherry. The tree, gicrja ; the fruit, 

 dlu-Mlu. A small cultivated tree, common in all orchards, 

 said to be raised from the seed only, not grafted. It has a 

 bitter harsh fruit, which when ripe becomes almost black in 

 colour, and is as large as our largest cherries. The fruit is 

 not much eaten whilst fresh, but is dried, the stones being 

 removed, when it is rather nice, though astringent ; this 

 dried fruit is largely exported into Persia, a very little to 

 Afghanistan. I never met with it as an import into India. 

 The dried fruit is considered an excellent remedy to wounds. 



Prunus divaricata, Ledeh. Eosace^. 

 And other species. 



A Plum, dlu, dlucha, gurja, gurda ; the dried fruit or Prune, 

 dht-hokhdra ; this last name is also, but not commonly applied 

 to the fresh fruit. The plum is cultivated in all orchards, 

 usually by scions or self-sown seed, and not ordinarily from 

 grafts, hence the ordinary fruit is very poor, and austere to 

 the taste. The better sorts of fruit raised by grafting are 

 called gicrja, gurda ; there are many varieties of these, and 

 some very fine, one especially, a very deeply-coloured almost 

 black variety, called dlu-sla. Meshad is now as much 

 celebrated as Bokhara used to be for its plums, and there is 



