36 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. (February, 1909. | 
from which the brackish water had receded. Late in the spring 
the shora-gaz of the Gaud-i-Zireh yields in very large quantities 
a kind of sugar which the Baluchis call term. This occurs on 
the branches in round lumps as large as walnuts or smaller. 
The flock owners (Maldar) collect a quantity of it, and a large 
number of men from Bandar i-Kamal Khan and Rudbar also 
very hard substance, and the beating does not reduce it to 
powder, but to small pieces about the size of split peas. In the 
proper season an ordinary man could collect daily 48 pounds of 
tirmi. The price of one Seistani man (6$1b) is 3 to 4 krans 
(Re 1-). The collection is, therefore, a profitable industry. 
Tamarisk manna or gazangabin is imported into Bombay 
from Persia. The value is about eight annas per pound. It is 
kept in most druggists’ shops in northern India. The Hakims, 
it being a Muhammadan drug, consider the manna to be deter- 
gent. aperient and expectorant. 
he chemical composition of this substance is of some 
interest. Samples of manna from Sinai and Kurdistan were 
examined by Berthelot! in 1861. They were thick syrupy or 
tirmi from Seistan, and the second was called maki or tamarisk 
manna from Dera Ghazi Kh e tirmi was a soft, gummy, 
deliquescent substance mixed with a few small leaves. Alcohol 
separated a large quantity of sugar,reducing Fehling ’s solution 
and readily fermenting with yeast. The portion insoluble in 
alcohol was in white crystals and solublein half its own weight of 
water. It melted at 140°C.: solution was dextro-rotatory, 
ansparent crystals had separated out which were identified 
se of cane sugar. The chief sugar of tamarisk manna 
is, therefore, not mannite, but a saccharose or cane sugar as 
has been indicated by previous investigators. The samples 
contained only traces of nitrogen, esimated by Kjeldahl’s 
process, proving that the exudation, as a food substance, is 
composed entirely of carbohydrates. 
white tr. 
as tho 
] Comptes Rendus, 53, 583. 
2 Archiv der Pharmazie, 192 ( 1870), 246. 
