386 APPENDIX D. 



demned. It is difficult to believe that in an age when the 

 barriers that have closed the other least known regions of the 

 earth are successively removed, Marocco, so close to Europe 

 and so attractive, can alone resist the progress of modern 

 exploration.' 



APPENDIX D. 

 on some of the economic plants of maeocco. 

 By Joseph Dalton Hookbk. 

 Gum Aiiimoniacum. 



Our endeavours to obtain accurate information regarding the 

 Marocco gum ammoniac plant were ceaseless and fruitless. 

 Jackson, who gives a rude figure of a portion of a leaf and a 

 scanty description ('Account of the Empire of Marocco,' 136, 

 t. 7), says that it is the produce of a plant like Fennel, but lax-ger, 

 and called Fashook in Arabic, and that it grows in the plains 

 of the interior provinces, abounding in the north of the city of 

 Marocco, in a sandy light soil. Jackson further states that 

 neither bird nor beast is seen where this plant grows, the 

 vulture only excepted, and that it is attacked by a beetle 

 having a long horn proceeding from its nose, with which it 

 perforates the plant, and makes the incisions whence the gum 

 oozes out. Under his description of the vulture, he states 

 that, with the exception of the ostrich, this is the largest bird 

 in Marocco; that it is common in all places where the gum 



' The scope of these remarks being limited to the geography of 

 South Marocco, I have not noticed several recent publications, not 

 devoid of interest and value, but in which no important contribution 

 is made to our geographical knowledge. We have referred in the text 

 to papers by MM. Beaumier, Balansa, and Lambert, in the Bulletin of 

 the French Geographical Society. A more considerable work, entitled 

 ' Morocco and the Moors,' by Arthur Leared, M.D., appeared in 1874. 

 It contains much information carefully collected by the author, along 

 with a lively account of his own experiences, but circumstances pre- 

 vented him from entering on new ground. 



