PISTACIA TEREBINTHUS.— CHIAN TURPENTINE TREE. 
Class XX. DICECIA.— Order V. PENTANDRIA. 
Natural Order, MACARDIACE M . — T H E CASHEW TRIBE. 
This tree affords the Chian, or Cyprus Turpentine. It is a native of the south of Europe and the 
north of Africa. It is cultivated in the islands of Scio, (the Chios of the ancients,) and Cyprus, and has 
been long known in this country as an ornamental plant. There is a fine tree in Chelsea Garden, near the 
gate, from which the accompanying figure was designed. 
The Pistacia Terebinthus is a tree of low stature, seldom attaining the height of thirty or thirty-five 
feet. The trunk and branches are invested with a dark grey or rugged blackish bark, and bent in all 
directions. The leaves are pinnate, and consist of three pair of ovate-oblong, entire, smooth leaflets, with 
an odd one, all of a dark green colour, and somewhat curved backward. They are, in our climate, deci- 
duous, and according to Sir James Ed. Smith appear by Dr. Sibthorpe’s drawings, to be so in Greece. 
The young leaves have a beautiful reddish hue, and are thin, smooth, and shining. The flowers, which 
appear in May and June, are on different trees, in large, very compound panicles. In the stamineous 
ones the calyx consists of one leaf, and is divided into five deep equal segments. There is no corolla. The 
filaments are four or five in number, capillary, very short, and supporting large, brown, erect, oblong quad- 
rangular anthers, of two cells bursting lengthwise. The pistilline flowers are placed on a common peduncle 
in alternate order, consisting of a calyx in three small squamous segments, and a roundish somewhat trian- 
gular germen, supporting three erect styles, with obovate, reflexed, clubbed stigmas. The fruit is a drupe, 
scarcely bigger than a large pea, ovate, smooth, a little compressed, and of a reddish colour. Galls of the 
same shape are found on the leaves, and very large pod-like ones, are often produced from the young 
branches, as the figures of the older botanists represent. 
Cyprus or Chian turpentine, which is furnished by this tree, is procured by wounding the bark of the 
trunk in several places, during the month of July, leaving a space of about three inches between the 
wounds; from these the turpentine exudes and is received on stones, upon which it becomes condensed by 
the coldness of the night, so as to admit of being scraped off before sunrise. To free it from extraneous 
substances, it is again liquefied by the sun’s heat, and pressed through a strainer, when it is fit for use. 
The quantity produced is so very inconsiderable, that large trees, sixty years old, are said to yield on an 
average only two pounds nine ounces and six drachms a piece; but in the eastern part of Cyprus and Chio, 
the trees afford somewhat more, though still so little as to render its price high, on which account it is 
much adulterated with the other turpentines. 
Qualities. — The best Chio turpentine is generally about the consistence of thick honey; is very 
tenacious, clear, and almost transparent ; of a white colour inclining to yellow, and of a fragrant smell; 
moderately warm to the taste, but free from acrimony and bitterness. 
<f Volatile Oils,” says Mr. Field, [Chromatography, p. 370], “ procured by distillation from turpentine 
and other vegetal substances, are almost destitute of the strength of the expressed oils, having hardly more 
cementing power in painting than water alone, and are principally useful as solvents, and media of resinous 
and other substances introduced into vehicles and varnishes. In drying they partly evaporate, and partly by 
combination with oxygen form resins, and become fixed. They are not, however, liable to change colour 
like expressed oils of a drying nature ; and, owing to their extreme fluidness, are useful diluents of the latter : 
they have also a bleaching quality, whereby they, in some degree, correct the tendency of drying and ex- 
pressed oils to discolourment. Of essential oils, the most volatile, and nearest in this respect to alcohol is 
the oil of Sassafras, but that most used in painting is the Oil of Turpentine ; the rectified oil, improperly 
called Spirit of Turpentine, &c. is preferable only on account of its being thinner, and more free from resin. 
By the action of oxygen upon it water is either generated or set free, and the oil becomes thickened, but 
is again rendered limpid by a boiling heat upon water, in which the oxygen and resin are separated from it. 
When coloured by heat or otherwise, oil of turpentine may be bleached by agitating some lime powder in it, 
which will carry down the colour.” 
Medical Properties and Uses. — The writings of Dioscorides, Pliny, and Aretasus, prove that the 
ancients admitted all the varieties of the turpentines into their materia medica. The first-named author, in 
his second book, classifies them as moist and dry. Pliny adopts the same arrangement ; and both enume- 
