BOTANY OF BALUCH-AFGHAN BOUNDARY COMMISSION, 1896. I3I 
This is the plant, or at least one of the plants, that people from 
Kandahar yearly visit the Koh-i-Sultan to collect. 
Captain McMahon, who has often watched the collection of Assa- 
foetida in other parts of the North-Western Frontier, thus describes 
the process : When the heads are 2 or 3 feet high they are cut down 
to within one to two inches from the ground. The cut ends are then 
covered with a little dry earth in order, the collectors say, to keep 
the wind off. After twenty hours the people collect what has ex- 
uded ; the stock is then cut down another eighth of an inch. Captain 
McMahon has not noticed whether the operations are performed a 
any particular hour of the day. 
The milk is not allowed to dry in the sun ; to obviate this the 
Assa-foetida collectors build small stone traps, open at one side, over 
each plant in order to keep off the sun’s rays. The juice when partly 
dried is mixed with some kind of earth like Fuller’s earth ; this is 
merely to increase the weight and not with any idea of improving the 
drug. Doubtless the precautions taken to prevent drying are mainly 
with a view to facilitate this subsequent adulteration. 
The collection is usually carried on about June and July chiefly 
by Kakars-— and among these by the tribe of Hari Pal, and by 
Babars, who travel to the likely places from Kandahar. 
This year there were no signs of any arrivals up to the middle of 
May, when the Commission left the region. This was partly because 
there had been no rain during the two or three previous seasons, 
but partly also — so the guides informed the party — because a 
rumour had got abroad that a. British force was expected this year, 
the Commission being magnified into an army corps. 
On the hills round Amir Chah many of the small traps men- 
tioned above were met with. They were not the domed struc- 
tures formed of twigs and covered with clay that have been de- 
scribed by Aitchison {Trans, Bot, Soc. Edin,^ xviii, 70), but were 
made of stones. Small flat stones were propped against each other 
so as to form triangular or quadrilateral chambers, open at one 
end, usually the north, roofed over with another flat stone and 
measuring from 6 to 12 inches in height by about as much across 
the mouth. 
COMPOSITi^:. 
13. Phagnalon acuminatum Boiss. FL Orient,, iii, 222. 
Wuchdara river, among rocks. 5,000 feet; Lon. 66°25' E., 
Maynard 
Mr. Lace reports P, nivium from British Baluchistan, bu,t not 
this species. 
