574 COSMOS, 



wellia thurifera of Colebrooke),* myrrh, (a species of amyris, 

 first accurately described by Ehrenberg,) and the so-called 

 balsam of Mecca, (the balsamodendron gileadense, of 

 Kunth). These products constituted an important branch of 

 commerce between the contiguous tribes and the Egyptians, 

 Persians, and Indians, as well as the Greeks and Komans ; 



fore the time of Abraham, and there founded flourishing kingdoms. 

 (Ewald, Geschichte des Vollces Israel, Bd. i. s. 337 und 450.) 



* The tree which furnishes the Arabian incense of Hadramaut, cele- 

 brated from the earliest times, and which is never to be found in the Island 

 of Socotora, has not yet been discovered and determined by any botanist, 

 not even by the laborious investigator Ehrenberg. An article similar 

 to this incense is found in eastern India, and particularly in Bundel- 

 cund, and is exported in considerable quantities from Bombay to 

 China. This Indian incense is obtained, according to Colebrooke (Asi- 

 atic Researches, vol. ix. p. 377), from a plant made known by Rox- 

 burgh, Boswellia thurifera, or serrata, (included in Kunth's family of 

 Burseracece). As from the very ancient commercial connections between 

 the coasts of southern Arabia and western India (Gildemeister, Scrip- 

 torum Ardbum Loci de rebus Indicis, p. 35), doubts might be enter- 

 tained as to whether the \if3avoQ of Theophrastus, (the thus of the 

 Romans), belonged originally to the Arabian peninsula, Lassen's remark 

 (Indische Alterihumskunde, Bd. i. s. 286), that incense is called " yd- 

 wana, Javanese, i. e., Arabian," in Amara-Koscha itself becomes very im- 

 portant apparently implying that this product is brought to India from 

 Arabia. It is called Turuschka' pindaka' sihld, (three names signify- 

 ing incense,) "yawand" in Amara-Koscha. (Amarakocha, publ. par 

 A. Loiseleur Deslongchamps, P. i. 1839, p. 156.) Dioscorides also 

 distinguishes Arabian from Indian incense. Carl Ritter, in his excel- 

 lent monograph on the kinds of incense (Asien, Bd. viii. Abth. i. s. 

 356-372), remarks very justly, that, from the similarity of climate, 

 this species of plant (Boswellia thurifera,} might be diffused from India 

 through the south of Persia to Arabia. The American incense (Oliba- 

 num americanum of our Pharmacopoeias,) is obtained from Idea guja* 

 nensis, Aubl. and Idea tacamahaca, which Bonpland and myself fre- 

 quently found growing on the vast grassy plains (Llanos) of Calaboso, 

 in South America. Idea, like Boswellia, belongs to the family of 

 Burseracece. 



The red pine (Pinus abies, Linn.,) produces the common incense 

 of our churches. The plant which bears myrrh, and which Bruce 

 thought he had seen, (Ainslie, Materia Medica of Hindostan, Madras, 

 1813, p. 29), has been discovered by Ehrenberg, near el-Gisan in Arabia, 

 and has been described by Nees von Esenbeck from the specimens col- 

 lected by him, under the name of Balsamodendron myrrha. The 

 Balsamodendron Kotaf of Kunth, an Amyris of Forskaal, was long 

 erroneously regarded as the true myrrh-tree. 



