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tree all covered over with beautiful crimfon flowers, of 
a very extraordinary and ftrange conftrudlion. I began 
then a drawing anew, with all that fatisfadlion known 
only to thofe who have been converfant in fuch difcove- 
ries. I took pieces of the gum with me. It is very light.. 
GALEN complains, that in his time, the myrrh was often 
mixed with a drug which he calls opocalpajum^ by a 
Greek name ; but v/hat this drug was, is totally unknown 
to us at this day. But, as the only view of the favage, 
in mixing another gum with his myrrh, mult have been 
to increafe the quantity, and as the great plenty, in which 
this gum is produced, and its colour make it very pro- 
sper for this ufe; and above all, as there is no reafon to> 
think, there is another gum-bearing tree of equal quali- 
ties in the country where the myrrh grows, it feems to 
me next to a proof, that this mull have been the opo- 
calpafum. I muft, however, confefs, that galen fays,, 
the opocalpafum was fo far from an innocent drug, that 
it was a mortal pcifon, and had produced very fatal ef- 
fecfls. But as thofe Troglodytes, though now more 
ignorant than formerly, are hill well acquainted with the; 
properties of their herbs and trees, it is not poflible, that 
the favage, defiring to increafe his fales, would mix them, 
with a poifon that muft needs diminifli them.. And. 
we may therefore, without fcruple, fuppofe, that galen 
was miftaken in the quality afcribed to this drug; and: 
that he might have imagined, that people died of the. 
opocalpafum^ who perhaps really died of the phyfician. 
Firft, becaufe we know of no gum or refin that is a. 
VoL. LXV. K h k . mortal 
