PISTACIA. 



323 



is that species called terebinthus, which lives to a very 

 great age; and seems to have been held in as great vene- 

 ration in the East, as the common oak was among the 

 Greeks, Romans, Germans, Gauls, and Britons." 



The Pistacia lentiscns, or Common Mastick tree, 

 French, Lentisque ; Italian, Sondro, is a native of 

 the Levant and the south of Europe : it grows about 

 eighteen or twenty feet high ; the trunk is covered with 

 a gray bark ; it sends out many branches, of which the 

 bark is of a reddish-brown colour ; the leaves are com- 

 posed of three or four pairs of small leaflets, of a lucid 

 green on their upper, but pale on their under side ; the 

 mid-rib, or common foot-stalk, has two narrow borders 

 or wings running from one leaflet to another. The fruit 

 is small, and black when ripe ; it has a stone in the 

 middle, which contains a white kernel ; and from these 

 kernels an oil is extracted, fit both for the lamp and the 

 table. 



This tree is chiefly valuable for the resinous substance 

 obtained from it, called gum mastick. In the isle of 

 Chios, the gathering of mastio-k usually begins on the 

 first of August. Incisions are made in several parts of 

 the bark of the trunk with large knives; the next 

 morning the resin is seen to distil from these incisions 

 in small tears, which are suffered to fall to the ground, 

 and hardening there become grains of mastick ; they are 

 about the size of pearl barley, yellow, slightly trans- 

 parent, and brittle. The ground is carefully swept under 

 the trees ; and this gathering is generally continued till 

 the middle of August, provided the weather be dry. 

 Towards the end of September, the resin again exudes 

 from the same incisions, but in much smaller quantities 

 than before. The grains are sifted to separate them 



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