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XXVII.—The Dragon's Blood Tree of Socotra (Dracena Cinnabari, Bal. jil.). 
By Baytey Barrovr, Se.D., M.B., Regius Professor of Botany, University 
of Glasgow. 
The following remarks on the dragon’s blood tree of Socotra are intended 
to serve as introduction to Dr Doxsrr’s and Mr Henperson’s paper on the red 
resin obtained from the tree, and to furnish a technical description of the plant 
which has not hitherto appeared. In my account of the Botany of Socotra, 
which will shortly be published by the Society, further remarks upon this in- 
teresting tree will be found, along with a figure. 
Resina draconis (dragon’s blood resin), now only used as a varnish, has been 
known as a commercial product for many centuries. Under the name xuwvdBapu, 
DisocoriDEs* mentions a costly pigment brought from Africa, and under the 
same designation the author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Seat speaks of a 
product of the island of Dioscorida, the modern Socotra. This xwvaBapr is 
undoubtedly the resin dragon’s blood, or rather one of the resins at present in 
commerce under that name. Putny{ also mentions this produce. Various of 
the early Arabian geographers and European travellers speak of dragon’s 
blood as one of the commodities exported from the region of the incense 
country about the Gulf of Aden, and we have, in the narratives of explorers 
of this century, references to the production of the resin both on the Arabian 
and on the African coasts of that neighbourhood. 
But dragon’s blood resin has also been long known as a product of other 
parts of the globe. The fame of the dragon’s blood tree of Orotava, in Teneriffe, 
is world wide, and the resin of the Canary Islands tree was in former times 
exported in large quantities. 
Then from Sumatra and Borneo, and other islands of the Eastern Archipelago, 
a dragon’s blood resin is an article of trade, though no records of its export at 
an early period are extant. 
In the West Indies, and also in Mexico, substances are obtained which bear 
the name dragon’s blood, but, according te FLUckicEr and Hanpury, they are 
not met with in European commerce. 
The substances from these different regions, though bearing the same name, 
= Op. lib: Vv. cap, cix, Z 
+ Voyage of Nearcuus and Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, translated by Vincent, Oxford, 1809, 90. 
+ Hist. Nat., xxxiii. 38.1. 
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