164 MEDICINAL PLANTS. 



of north latitude, and limited on the west by a meridian passing 

 through the island JYlassowa, and on the east by another passing 

 through Cape Guardsoy, without the straits of Babelmaudel. This 

 country the Greeks knew by the name of Troglodytia ; not to be 

 confouuded with another nation of Troglodytes, very different in all 

 respects, living in the forests between Abyssinia and Nubia. The 

 myrrh of the Troglodytes was always, as now, preferred to that of 

 Arabia, That part of Abyssinia being half overrun and settled, 

 half wasted and abandoned, by a barbarous nation from the south- 

 ward, very little correspondence or commerce has been since carried 

 on between the Arabians and that coast; unless by some desperate 

 adventures of Mahometan merchants, made under accidental cir- 

 cumstances, which have sometimes succeeded, and very often like- 

 wise have miscarried. 



The most frequent way by which this Troglodyte myrrh is 

 exported, is from Massowa, a small Abyssinian island, on the coast 

 of the Red Sea. Yet the quantity of Abyssinian myrrh is so very 

 small, in comparison of that of Arabia sent to Grand Cairo, that 

 we may safely attribute to this only the reason why our myrrh is 

 not so good in quality as the myrrh of the ancients, which was 

 Abyssinian. Though those barbarians make use of the gum, leaves, 

 and bark of this tree, in diseases to which they are subject, yet as 

 very little is wanted for such purposes, and the tree is the common 

 timber of the country, this does not hinder them from cutting it 

 down every day, to burn for the common uses of life ; and as they 

 never plant, or replace the trees destroyed, it is probable that in 

 some years the true Troglodyte myrrh will not exist ; and the 

 erroneous descriptions of the Greek physicians will lead posterity, 

 as they have done us now, into various conjectures, all of them 

 false, on the question what that myrrh of the ancients was? 



Though the myrrh of the Troglodytes was superior to any Ara- 

 bian, yet the Greeks perceived that it was not all of equal goodness. 

 Pliny and Theophrastus makes this difference to arise from the 

 trees being partly wild, partly cultivated. But this is an imaginary 

 reason : all the trees were wild. But it was the age of the tree and 

 its health, the manner of making the cut or wound in it, the time 

 of gathering the myrrh, and the circumstances of the climate when 

 it was gathered, that constantly determined, and does yet determine, 

 the quality of the drug. In order to have myrrh of the first, or 



