6/4 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1775. 



the'tfee fias bfegurt to rot and turn foul in that part, and the myrrh is of a 2d 

 quality, and sells in Cairo about a 3d cheaper than the first. The myrrh also 

 produced from gashes near the roots, and in the trunks of old trees, is of the 

 2d growth and quality, and sometimes worse. This however is the good myrrh 

 of the Italian shops every where but in Venice. It is of a blackish red, foul 

 colour, solid and heavy, losing little of its weight by being long kept ; and it is 

 not easily distinguished from that of Arabia Felix. The 3d and worst kind is 

 gathered from old wounds or gashes, formerly made, in old trees ; or myrrh 

 that, passing unnoticed, has hung upon the tree ungathered a whole year ; 

 black and earth-like in colour, and heavy, with little smell and bitterness. This 

 apparently is the caucalis of the ancients. 



Pliny speaks of stacte, as if it was fresh or liquid myrrh ; and Dioscorides, 

 (cap. 67,) says something like this also. However, it is not credible that the 

 ancients, either Greeks or Latins, placed at such a distance, could ever see the 

 myrrh in that state. The natives of its country say, that it hardens on the tree 

 instantly, on being exposed to air ; and I, who was several months within 4 days 

 journey of the place where it grew, and had the savages quite at my devotion to 

 go and come from thence, could never see the newest myrrh softer than the 

 state it now is in ; though I think it dissolved more perfectly in water, than when 

 it had been kept. Dioscorides too mentions a kind of myrrh, which he says 

 was green, and of the consistence of paste. But as Serapion and the Arabs 

 say, that stacte was a preparation of myrrh dissolved in water, it is probable, 

 that this unknown green kind of Dioscorides was, like the stacte, a composition 

 of myrrh and some other ingredient, not a species of Abyssinian myrrh, which 

 he could never have seen, either soft or green. 



It may be remarked, that when we buy fresh or new myrrh, it has always a 

 very strong, rancid, oily smell ; and when thrown into water, globules of an 

 oily matter swim upon the surface. This greasiness is not from the myrrh ; it 

 is owing to the savages using goats-skins anointed with butter, to make them 

 supple, in which to put their myrrh at gathering ; and in these skins it remains, 

 and is brought to market : so that, far from its being a fault, as some ignorant 

 druggists at Rome and Venice believe, it is a mark that the myrrh is fresh 

 gathered, which is the best quality that myrrh of the first sort can have. Be- 

 sides, far from injuring the myrrh, this oily covering must rather at first have 

 been of service ; as it certainly imprisons and confines the volatile parts of new 

 myrrh, which escape in great quantities, to a very considerable diminution in the 

 weight. The piece of myrrh which I send you, is what a fine tree, less than 1 5 

 inches diameter in the trunk at the bottom, wounded in 2 places, produced at 

 one of the wounds, in the year 1771. And it maybe regarded as the only 

 unexceptionable and authentic evidence in Europe, of what the Troglodyte 



