PIX BURGUNDICA. 617 



(1G93), who says " it is brought to us out of Burgundy, Germany and 

 other places near Strasburgh." ' 



Pomet, writing in Paris about the same period, discards the prefix 

 Burgundy as a fiction, remarking that the best Poix grasse comes from 

 Holland and Strassburg.- 



Whether this resin ever was collected in Burgundy we are unable to 

 determine. It may probably have acquired the name through having 

 been brought into commerce from Switzerland and Alsace by way of 

 Franche Comte, otherwise called Comt^ de Bourgogne or Haute 

 Bourgogne.^ 



Burgundy pitch is enumerated among the materia medica of the 

 London Pharmacopoeia of 1G77, and in every subsequent edition. In 

 that of 1809 it was defined under the name of Fix ai'ida, as the pre- 

 pared resin of PiniLS Abies. 



Production — Biu-gundy pitch is produced in Finland, in the Black 

 Forest in the Grand Duchy of Baden, Austria and Switzerland. On 

 the estate of Baron Linder at Svarta near Helsingf oi-s, it is obtained by 

 melting the crude resin in contact with the vapour of water, and 

 straining. The quantity annually produced there was stated in 1867 

 to be 35,000 kilogr. (689 cwt.);* that afforded by an establishment at 

 Ilm in the same country amounted to 80,000 kilogr. (1,575 cwt.).' 



In the neighbourhood of Oppenau and on the Kniebis mountain in 

 the Grand Duchy of Baden the st^ms of the firs are wounded at equal 

 distances by making perpendicular channels, 1| inches wide and the 

 same in depth. The resin which exudes from these channels is scraped 

 off" with an iron instrument made for the purpose, and purified by being 

 melted in hot water and strained. This is performed in three or 

 four small establishments at Oppenau and the neighbouring village of 

 Lbcherberg. In this state the resin, which is opaque and contains much 

 moisture, is called Wasserharz. By further training and evaporating 

 a portion of the water its quality is improved. 



The manufacture in that part of Germany is on the decline, partly in 

 consequence of the timber being injured by the wounding of the trees, 

 so that the collecting of resin is not permitted in the large forests 

 belonging to the governments of Baden and Wiirtemberg. We have 

 had the opportunity of obser^-ing^ that in the establishments in question 

 French turpentine or galipot, imported from Bordeaux, as well as 

 American rosin or colophony, are used in quantities certainly exceeding 

 that of the resin grown on the spot. 



In the middle of the last century some Bm-gundy pitch was pro- 

 duced, according to Duhamel,^ in the present canton of Neuchatel, but 

 no such branch of industry is now pursued there, at least on a large 

 scale. On the other hand, in the districts of Moutier and Delemont in 

 the Bernese Jura this resin is still collected, though it is not kno^vn as 

 Burgundy Pitch, but is termed simply Poix blanche (AVhite Pitch). 



' Compleat English Physician, 1693. 1031. * Pharm. Journ. ix. (1876) 164; also in 



^ Hist, des Drogues, Paris, 1694. part i. Hanbttry's Science Papers, pp. 46 to 53. 



287. * OeslerreicAischer Ausstdlungs-Berichi, x. 



^ Chabrseus in his Stirpium Sciagraphia (Wien, 1868) 471. 



(1666) remarks that he had seen the Pesse ® I spent several days in the localities in 



[P. Abies L.] in great plenty "in Burgun- 1873.— F. A. F. 



dicis montibus," yet makes no particular " TraiU des Arbres, etc. i. (1775) 12. 



allusion to its yielding resin. 



