TREES AND SHRUBS 123 



containing six or seven men were made out of the 

 trunks, and that the inhabitants fattened their pigs 

 on the fruit ; but he adds that so many boats, 

 shields, and corn-measures had been made out of 

 them, that even in his time there was scarcely a 

 dragon-tree to be seen in the island." 



The stem exudes a gum, and the following 

 account of the means of collecting it is taken from 

 a Portuguese account of " The Discovery of 

 Madeira," written in 1750 : " All over the island 

 grows a tree from which the dragon's blood is 

 procured. This is performed by making incisions 

 in the bark, from whence the gum issues very 

 plentifully into pots hung upon the branches to 

 receive it. The people use it as a sovereign remedy 

 for bruises, to which they are very much exposed 

 by traversing their rocky country ; and this, with 

 one panacea more, completes their whole materia 

 medica that is, balsam of Peru, imported from the 

 Brazils in small gourds by their annual ships. 

 These two, they imagine, have power to cure almost 

 all disorders, especially those that are external." 



Among other native trees, the beautiful Taocus 

 baccata and the Juniperus oxycedrus, with its great 

 spreading silvery -green branches, cannot be omitted. 

 The former has become almost extinct, and the 



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