[oec | 
III. O» the Genus Boswéllia, with Descriptions and Figures of three new Species. By 
GEORGE BIRDWOOD, M.D. Edinburgh. Communicated by DANIEL HANBURY, Esq., 
F.R.S. $ L.S. 
(Plates XXIX.-XXXII.) 
Read April 1st, 1869. 
I OFFER here the descriptions of three new species of Boswellia, natives of the Soumali 
country. The characters of one of them make it, I believe, necessary that the characters 
hitherto given of the genus Boswellia should be reconsidered ; and hence the first part of 
the title which I have, very reluctantly, given to this paper. Another of these plants, 
all of which yield frankincense, yields, I believe, the bulk of the olibanum of commerce. 
And I believe that the discovery of these plants settles at last the controversy which has 
gone on for ages concerning frankincense. 
The offering of incense on altars, and in cups and closed censers, is represented in 
painting and in sculpture on the monuments of Egypt and Assyria; but although incense, 
as a rule, implies frankincense, and these representations might with more or less plausi- 
bility be interpreted by the Jewish ritual, they merely record the contemporaneous use 
ofincense. We are expressly told by Herodotus that frankincense was excluded from 
the balsamic substances used in the preparation of the mummies of the Egyptians; but 
although this might perhaps have been because of its being sacred to the service of their 
gods, still the first undoubted record of the use of frankincense, and the first mention of 
it—as yet known—is in the - | 
> BrBLE.—- Stacte, and onycha, and galbanum, with pure frankincense” were the “ sweet 
spices ” of which the “ pure and holy perfume,” or “ confection,” of divine prescription 
was made “after the art of the apothecary," which was offered every morning and evening, 
on the “ Altar of Incense" or “ Golden Altar," set in the * Holy Place” between the 
“Golden Candlestick”? and “the Table of Shewbread,” before the “Holy of Holies"'. 
The priest took a censer, “ full of burning coals of fire," from off z the Altar of Burnt 
Offering ” or * Brazen Altar," and his “ hands full of the sweet incense beaten small," 
and entered “the Holy Place" from “the Court of the Tabernacle,” and emptied his 
censer upon the Golden Altar, and “ put the incense upon the fire before the Lord, that 
the cloud of incense may cover the mercy-seat”. It was death for the priests to make 
the sacred incense for themselves, even “to smell thereto”, or for any one but the priests, 
* the seed of Aaron,” to offer it^, or to burn “ strange incense " upon the Golden Altar”, 
! Exod. xxx. 34-36. 2 Lev. xvi. 12, 13. 2 Exod. xxx. 37, 38. 
* Numb. iii. 10; xvi.; 2 Chron. xxvi. 16-24. 
: * Exod. xxx. 9; Lev. x. 1-7; Numb. iii. 4, xxvi. 61. 
VOL. XXVII. 
