388 APPENDIX D. 



The Maroccan Ammoniacum plant must not be confounded 

 yritla the Persian Dorema Ammoniacum, or ' Ushak,' wMcli is 

 also bled by insects. 



The Fasbook gum is used by the Moors and by some Ori- 

 entals as a depilatory, and in skin diseases ; it is exported to 

 the East from Mazagan, vid Gibraltar and Alexandiia. 



Eupliorhium, Fnrbiune or Dergmuse. 



Eupliorhia resinifera. — Berg, und Schmidt, Officinelle Gerwachse, 

 V. iv. (1863) xxxiv. d. ; Fluckiger and Hanbury, Pharmaco- 

 graphia, 502; Ball, in Journ. Linn. Soc. Bot. xvi. 661; Eu- 

 phorbium, Jackson's 'Account of the Empire of Marocco,' 

 134, t. 6 (left-band figure only). 



"We have little to add to the description of the Euphorbium tree 

 given by Jackson, and that in the 'Pharmacographia' cited above. 

 As stated in the body of this work it is confined to the interior 

 of the empire, and the only living specimens we met with were 

 from a gardeii in Mesfiouia (see p. 163). Jackson confounded 

 two plants under this name ; one, the true species, growing in 

 the Atlas, with 3-4-angled branches, the other a sea-coast 

 plant, with 9-10-angled branches, which is carried to Ma- 

 rocco for tanning purposes, and of which he says, that during 

 the three years of his residence at Agadir he never saw any 

 gum upon it. 



The true plant is figured and described by Jackson as an 

 erect tree, with a stout short woody trunk, and very numerous 

 upcurved long sparingly divided branches, the whole resembling 

 a candelabrum. The angles of the branches are armed with 

 short spines, and the flowers are prodticed from the tips of the 

 young shoots. The thorns adhere to everything that touches 

 them, and he supposes them to have been intended by nature 

 ' to prevent cattle from eating this caustic plant, which they 

 always avoid on account of its prickles.' The juice flows from 

 incisions made with a knife, and hardens and drops ofi" in Sep- 

 tember. The plants, he says, produce abundantly once only in 

 four years, and the fourth year's produce is more than all Europe 

 can consume. The people who collect the gum are obliged to 

 tie a cloth over their mouths and nostrils, to prevent the small 



