146 BURSERACE^. 



also the " Mirrafina," which is stated, about the year 1502, by Tom^ 

 Lopez to be collected (?) in the island of " Monzambiche." ^ 



According to Yaughan, Bissa B61 is mixed with the food given to 

 milch cows and buffaloes in order to increase the quantity and improve 

 the quality of their milk, and that it is also used as size to impart a 

 bright gloss to whitewashed walls. 



Miles mentions^ that myrrh, called there hodthai, is only used in the 

 Somali country, by men to whiten their shields (by means of an 

 emulsion made with the drug), by women to cleanse their hair. Pro- 

 bably hodthai and habaghadi is one and the same thing. 



Bissa B61 differs from myrrh in its stronger, almost acrid taste and in 

 odour, which, when once familiar is easily recognizable ; fine specimens 

 of the former have the outward characters of myrrh and perhaps are 

 often passed off for it. A good sample of " coarse " habaghadi myrrh 

 as sent in 1877 by Captain Hunter from Aden proved to contain but 

 very little resin. This resin is manifestly different from that of myrrh 

 as already shown by its paler, more reddish colour. The resin of 

 Bissa B61 moreover is but very sparingly soluble in bisulphide of carbon; 

 this solution is not altered by bromine, that of true myrrh, as above 

 stated, assuming a most intense violet colour on addition of bromine 

 Nor is the resin of habaghadi soluble in petroleum ether. Of the 

 gummy substance, which is by far the prevailing constituent of this drug, 

 a small portion only is soluble in water. These extremely marked 

 differences no doubt depend uj)on a widely discrepant composition of 

 the resins of the two kinds of myrrh as well as upon a different propor- 

 tion of gum and resin. The Bissa B61 usually seen is an impure and 

 foul substance, which is regarded by London druggists as well as by the 

 Banian traders in India as a very inferior dark sort of myrrh. 



2. Arabian Myrrh — The drug we have mentioned at p. 143 as col- 

 lected to the eastward of Aden, is of interest as substantiating the 

 statement of Theophrastus that both olibanum and myrrh grow in 

 Southern Arabia, 



The drug, which is not distinguished by any special name in English 

 trade, is in irregular masses seldom exceeding 1| inches long, and 

 having a somewhat gummy -looking exterior. The larger lumps seem 

 formed by the cohesion of small, rounded, translucent, externally 

 shining tears or drops. The fracture is like that of common myrrh, but 

 less unctuous and wants the whitish markings. The odour and taste 

 are those of the ordinary drug. Pieces of a semi-transparent papery 

 bark are attached to some of the lumps. We extracted the resin of a 

 sample of this myrrh from the territory of the Fadhli, as sent to us by 

 Captain Hunter. Its solution in bisulphide of carbon or petroleum 

 ether was coloured by bromine as stated above, (p. 144) with regard to 

 typical myrrh (Heerabol) from the Somali Country. The name applies 

 to myrrh from the vicinity of Ras Morbat in the same region. But the 

 resin of another kind of Arabian myrrh, for which we are likewise 

 indebted to Captain Hunter, is not coloured when treated in the same 

 way. This is the myrrh " Hodaidia Jebeli " from north and north- 

 western Yenen. 



1 In Ramusio (see Appendix, R) 239. -Journ. of (he B. Geogr. Soc. 22 (1872)64. 



