130 
■PLTNT'S NATTJKAL HISTORY. 
[Book XII.. 
and baring the roots ; indeed, the cooler the roots are kept, the 
better it is. 
CHAP. 34. THE TEEES WHICH PRODUCE MTERH. 
The tree grows to the height of five cubits, and has thorns 
upon it : the trunk is hard and spiral, and thicker than that 
of the incense-tree, and much more so at the root than at the 
upper part of the tree. Some authors have said that the bark 
is smooth like that of the arbute, others, that it is rough and 
covered with thorns : it has the leaf of the olive, but more wavy, 
with sharp points at the edges : Juba says, however, that it 
resembles the leaf of the olusatrum. Some again say that it 
resembles the juniper, only that it is rougher and bristling 
with thorns, and that the leaves are of a rounder shape, though 
they have exactly the taste of the juniper. There have been 
some writers who have incorrectly asserted that both myrrh 
and frankincense are the product of the same tree. 
CHAP. 35. THE NATURE AI^D VARIOUS KINDS OF MYRRH. 
Incisions are made in the myrrh- tree also twice a year, and at 
the same season as in the incense-tree ; but in the case of the 
myrrh- tree they are all made the way up from the root as far as 
the branches which are able to bear it. The tree spontaneously 
exudes, before the incision is made, a liqaid which bears the 
name of stacte,^^ and to which there is no myrrh that is supe- 
rior. Second only in quality to this is the cultivated myrrh : 
of the wild or forest kind, the best is that which is gathered in 
summer. They give no tithes of myrrh to the god, because it 
is the produce of other countries as well ; but the growers pay 
the fourth part of it to the king of the Gebanitae. Myrrh is 
bought up indiscriminately by the common people, and then 
packed into bags ; but our perfumers separate it without any 
difficulty, the principal tests of its goodness being its unctuous- 
ness and its aromatic smell. (16.) There are severaP^ kinds 
1^ Theophrastus says the terebinth. 
1^ From the Greek ora^w, ^* to drop." Fee observes, that the moderns 
know nothing positive as to the mode of extracting myrrh from the tree. 
See the account given by Ovid, Met. B. x. 1. 500 et seq. of the transforma- j, 
tion of Myrrha into this tree, — " The warm drops fall from the tree. The i 
tears, even, have their own honour ; and the myrrh that distils from the i 
bark bears the name of its mistress, and in no age will remain unknown," \ 
17 Fee remarks, that at the present day we are acquainted only with one I 
kind of myrrh ; the fragments which bear an impression like those of nails I 
