MAN'S RECORD 



OF 



HIS OWN EXISTENCE. 



TN the distribution of species over the Globe, the order of nature has been obscured through the 

 -*- interference of man. He has transported animals and plants to countries where they were pre- 

 viously unknown ; extirpating the forest and cultivating the soil, until at length the face of the Globe 

 itself is changed. 



To ascertain the amount of this interference, displaced species must be distinguished, and 

 traced each to its original home. Detached observations have been already given in the Twenty-first 

 and succeeding chapters of my Races of Man ; but, when such observations are extended to all parts 

 of the Globe, the accumulated facts require some plan of arrangement. 



A list will naturally assume the chronological order, beginning with Egypt, the country that con- 

 tains the earliest records of the human family ; and receding geographically from the same central 

 point of reference. 



"4713 B. C." (= 4493 -f- y$ of a "phcenix," = 220 years = y 7 of a " Great Year"), the so- 

 called "Julian Period." The Egyptian years however being calendar years = 4711 B. C. 



4491 B. C. (= 4493 in calendar years = 2953 -)- 1540), beginning of the first Great Year in the 

 Egyptian reckoning. 



Artemisia Judaica of the Sinai Desert. A kind of wormwood called in Egypt " shyeh ; " in 

 which we recognize the " shyh " of Genesis ii. 5, — xxi. 15, Job xxx. 4 to 7, and "shea" of Haly 

 Abbas, and Avicenna : A. Judaica was observed by Rauwolf iii. 22. p. 456, and Hasselquist, in Pal- 

 estine ; by Forskal p. 198, and Delile, in the Desert around Suez, collected there for transportation 

 to the drug shops of Egypt. 



The "land of Havilah" containing gold, "bdellium and the onyx-stone" — (Gen. ii. 11) has 

 been identified with a district on the Persian Gulf at the mouth of the Euphrates ; where the princi- 

 pal of the Bahrein islands continues to bear the name Aval (Gen. x. 7 and 29, xxv. 18, Forster, and 

 Sm. geogr. diet.). 



Borassus dichotomies of the shores of the Persian Gulf. A branching palm called " oka-mun- 

 del" (Graham) : the "vthlh" of the land of Havilah — (Gen. ii. 11), and of Numb. xi. 7, is identi- 

 fied by Josephus, Aquila, Symmachus, Theod . . . . , and Hieronymus, with " vthellion," the gum- 

 like substance bdellium: " vthellion " is described by Dioscorides. as the exudation of an Arabian 

 tree ; and among the Romans "bdellium" is mentioned by Plautus, and Pliny: the " dum " of Abu 

 Hanifa is identified by Ebn Baitar with the " mukl ; " Arabian bdellium according to Avicenna 206 is 

 the product of a kind of palm called "rum" (read "dum" by Sprengel) ; and a second branching 

 palm called " dum," but sometimes " tan," was observed by Forskal exxvi. under cultivation in 

 Yemen. Eastward, bdellium is called in Hindustanee "gugal" or " muql" (D'roz.); " mokl asrak " 

 or bdellium according to Kaempfer amoen. 668 is the inspissated juice of fruit of a flabellate-leaved 

 palm growing on both sides of the Persian Gulf, but not met with by himself ; its preparation "from 

 the unripe fruit" was witnessed by Herbertus de Jager (who however gives the species as " B. flabel- 

 liformis " ) : B. dichotomus was observed by Vaupel " in various parts of Goozerat," also covering 

 "the whole of Diu Island," and according to Nimmo " a solitary tree grows " as far South as the 

 vicinity of Bombay, bat its "fructification has not been examined " (Graham). 



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