

CALABRIAN MANNA. 363 



vrnus, L., and F. rotundifolia, DC., which trees aie cultivated 1872. 

 for the purpose of yielding it chiefly in Calabria and Sicily. 

 Of the method of collecting manna in Sicily there are tolerably 

 exact accounts ; and the manna plantations of that island have 

 also been fully described. 1 



Having never heard of manna plantations in Calabria, nor Inquiries 

 seen any modern account of manna-gathering in that region, I 01 >u J6C 

 wrote in 1868 to my friend Colonel Yule of Palermo to inquire 

 if he could furnish me with any particulars. Colonel Yule 

 being unable to answer my questions, communicated them to 

 Mr. Grant, British Consul at Brindisi, who in his turn sought 

 to obtain the desired information from some of the British Vice- 

 Consuls (Italians) in Calabria. But except the statement that 

 the site of its production was the province of Calabria Citra, 

 and especially the territory of Eossano on the shores of the 

 Gulf of Taranto, I was unable to gain any very precise know- 

 ledge on the subject. 



Here I may remind you of an investigation into the history 

 of manna which I made in 1869, 2 and that one conclusion to 

 which it led was this, that manna was collected in Calabria 

 lor hundreds of years prior to its being a commercial product of 

 fticily, and that the earliest accounts of manna-gathering in the 

 latter only date from the second half of the seventeenth century. 



It will be well now to consider some remarks that have been 

 made by travellers regarding manna as an object of industry in Evidence of 

 Calabria ; though they are only passing allusions, they suffice 

 to show that this drug was at least a well-recognised production 

 of the country in question. 



Baron Biedesel, a German nobleman who made an interesting 

 journey through Sicily and Southern Italy about a century ago, 

 and whose travels have been published both in German and 

 English, 3 travelled from Cotrone to Cariati, small towns on the 



1 See in particular a paper by Dr. Cleghorn on the Botany and Agriculture 

 of Malta and Sicily Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, 

 vol. x. 1868-69. 



2 Pharm. Journ., xi. (1870) 326. 



3 Travels through Sicily and that part of Italy formerly called Magna 

 Grcecia. Translated from the German by J. R. Forster, F.R.S., London, 1773. 



