362 
pliot's I^'ATURAL histoet. 
[Book XYI. 
wood in the method employed for the manufacture of char- 
coaL^^ It is this pitch that is used for seasoning wine, being 
first pounded and reduced to a fine powder : it is of a blacker 
colour, too, than the other sort. The same resin, if boiled gently 
with water, and then strained ofi*, becomes viscous, and assumes 
a red colour; it is then known as distilled pitch:" for 
making this, the refuse portions of the resin and the bark of 
the tree are generally selected. 
Another method is adopted for the manufacture of that used 
as crapula.^^ Eaw flower of resin is taken, direct from the 
tree, with a plentiful sprinkling of small, thin chips of the 
wood. These are then pounded down and passed through a 
sieve, after which they are steeped in water, which is heated 
till it comes to a boil. The unctuous portion that is extracted 
from this is the best resin : it is but rarely to be met with, 
and then onl}- in a few places in Italy, in the vicinity of the 
Alps: it is in considerable request for medicinal purposes. 
Por this, they generally boil a congius of white resin to two 
congii of rain-water : ^"^ some persons, however, think it better^^ 
to boil it without water for one whole day by a slow fire, 
taking care to use a vessel of white copper.^^ Some, again, 
are in the habit of boiling the resin of the terebinth in a flat 
pan^^ placed upon hot ashes, and prefer it to any other kind. 
The resin of the mastich^'^ is held in the next degree of esti- 
mation.^^ 
^3 See c. 8 of the present Book. 
4^ Stillaticia. *5 See B. xiv. e. 25. 
*6 This operation removes from the pitch a great portion of its essential 
oil, and disengages it of any extraneous bodies that may have been mixed 
with it. 
Fee remarks that there is no necessity for this selection, though no 
douht rain-water is superior to spring or cistern water, for some purposes, 
from its holding no terreous salts in solution. 
48 This would colour the resin more strongly, Fee says, and give it a 
greater degree of friability. 
49 See B. xxxiv. c. 20. See B. xiv. c. 25, and B. xxiv. c. 22. 
5- *' Sartago." Generally understood to be the same as our frying-pan. 
Fee remarks that this method would most inevitably cause the mass in 
fusion to ignite ; and should such not be the case, a coloured resin would 
be the result, coloured with a large quantity of carbon, and destitute of all 
the essential oil that the resin originally contained. 
5^ See B. xiv. c. 20, 
The terebinthine of the mastich, Fee says, is an oleo-resin, or in 
other words, composed of an essential oil and a resin. 
