BOTANICAL ORIGIN AND COUNTRY OF MYRRH. 



379 



account. 



Let us now consider what lias been ascertained on the subject. 1873. 

 In 1820-26, the German traveller Ehrenberg visited the Ehrenberg's 

 countries bordering the Eed Sea, and among other places, 

 Ghizan (Jhizan or Jezan), a town or village lying on the 

 Arabian coast in latitude 16 40' K, opposite to the group of 

 islands called the Farsan Archipelago, that is to say, about 

 300 miles north of the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. Here, and on 

 the neighbouring mountains of Djara 

 and Kara (which I do not find on 

 any map I have been able to con- 

 sult), he discovered myrrh-trees, 

 forming, as he says, the underwood 

 of a forest of Acacia, Moringa, and 

 Euphorbia. From these myrrh- 

 trees, he states, he picked some 

 very fine myrrh. He also obtained 

 herbarium specimens, which the 

 botanist Nees von Esenbeck de- 

 scribed under the name of Balsamo- 

 dendron Myrrlia, thus, as it would 

 seem, completely settling the ques- 

 tion. 



A few years ago Ehrenberg's 

 herbarium was incorporated in the 

 Royal Herbarium of Berlin, and 

 these myrrh-tree specimens were 

 re-examined by Dr. Otto Berg, with 

 results which doubtless occasioned 

 him some surprise. He found, in 

 fact, that Ehrenberg's Arabian 



myrrh-tree comprised two very distinct plants, namely, that 

 figured by Von Esenbeck, and another to which was attached 

 (correctly, let us hope) Ehrenberg's own tickets, stating that 

 from it he had got myrrh. Berg gave the new myrrh-tree 

 the name of B. Ehrenlergianum. 



Whether myrrh is collected from both we do not know. 

 Ehrenberg himself does not assert that the natives about Ghizan 



Dr. Berg's 

 account. 



Balsamodendron myrrha (after N. 

 Esenbeck.) 



