44 
THE LIGN ALOES, LIGNUM ALOES, ALOE WOOD, &c. 
priority ; perhaps both were formerly known, and the produce from each was sold 
indiscriminately as Aloe-wood or Lign Aloes, without any notice being taken of the 
very different habits of the plants which produced it. We are rather disposed to 
this belief, because, although the greater part of the Aloe-wood used in Palestine, 
and other neighbouring nations, might have been brought from the East Indies 
by merchants, — ^yet a passage in the Bible favours the supposition, that some 
trees producing this article must have grown naturally in Arabia, and were well 
known to the persons to whom the words alluded to were spoken. The passage 
referred to is in Numbers, chap, xiv., and verse 6 : “As the valleys are they 
spread forth, as gardens by the river’s side, as the trees of Lign Aloes which the 
Lord hath planted, and as cedar trees beside the waters.” Now, unless the trees 
mentioned here were known to the parties to whom this speech was addressed, the 
force of the illustration would not be apparent to them ; and it is scarcely probable 
that a person placed in the peculiar position of this speaker, would have selected a 
plant with which his auditors were wholly unacquainted. And as, too, the Aloe 
Tree is mentioned in connection with the Cedar, and stated to be of the Lord’s 
planting, in distinction from the planting of man ; it would convey the idea of a 
natural grove or wood of these plants, just as the cedar formed a natural forest on 
the banks of Mount Lebanon by the side of the river. 
Having premised thus far, it remains to point out the two plants which produce 
this valuable article of commerce, and to mention which was the probable one that 
appears to have occupied natural situations in Syria, and the neighbouring countries. 
The first is called Aquilaria Agallochum, Eagle-wood, Agila-wood, or Aloe- 
wood. This is a native of the East Indies, where in the hot plains it forms a large 
spreading tree ; and is called by the natives TJgoor or Ugooroo, but by Europeans 
Lignum Aloes, or Lign Aloes. This plant is peculiar in its construction and habit, 
and has, therefore, with a few others, which agree with it in several important 
particulars, been formed by botanists into a Natural Order called Aquilariacece. 
The second is named Aloexylon Agallochum, and grows wild on the highest 
mountains of Cochin China, and the Moluccas, where it forms a lofty upright 
growing tree, of no mean appearance. It is a very different plant from the last, 
and is associated with the Natural Order Leguminacece. 
The first of these plants, from its native localities in the hot damp Indian plains, 
would ever require the constant heat of the stove ; whilst the other, growing 
naturally on high mountains, although at times subjected to considerable heat, would 
yet, in some parts of the year, be exposed to many vicissitudes of w^eather, and 
considerable cold. Now it is well known, that in Palestine, although the heat in 
summer is great, yet during part of the year the weather is cold, and even frosty ; it 
is therefore scarcely probable that the Aquilaria Agallochum would grow and 
flourish in a climate, so very dissimilar to the one in which it is naturally found ; 
whilst the Aloexylon Agallochum, being a greenhouse plant, if not really a native of 
Arabia, might have been introduced at a very early date by some enterprising 
