GUM ARABIC. 261 
an excellent seed for the fattening of poultry. A good 
vinegar has been made from it. by fermentation ; and, 
on distillation, it yields a strong spirit. Millet seed is 
imported into this country from the East Indies, for the 
purpose chiefly of puddings; and, by many persons, it 
is preferred to rice. The stalks of the millet plant, if 
subjected to the same process that is adopted with the 
sugar-cane, yield a sweet juice, from which an excel- 
lent kind of sugar may be made. 
273. GUM ARABIC is a icell-kuuwn drug, obtained from a 
tree (Mimosa nilotica) which grows in Egypt. . 
This tree has leaves doubly winged, with spines at the base, and 
small flowers, of globular shape, growing four or fice tog-ether on 
slender footstalks. 
The principal supply of gum arable in this country 
is obtained from Barbary, Turkey, and the Persian 
Gulf. The average quantity imported from the Persian 
Gulf, betwixt 180-1? and 1808, was about 7500 hundred 
weight per annum, and the price for which it was 
vended at the East India Company's sales was about 
31. per hundred weight. It used formerly to be packed 
in skins, but it is now brought in large casks. The 
trees which yield it grow abundantly in numerous parts 
of Africa and Asia, but the gum does not freely exude 
from them except in tropical regions. It issues from 
clefts in the bark, in the same manner as the gum of 
the cherry and plum trees of our orchards and gardens : 
and, by exposure to the air, it soon becomes hard and 
solid. We are informed that, in some parts of Egypt, 
the inhabitants procure this gum, by boiling pieces of 
the roots of the trees, and afterwards separating it 
from the water. We receive gum arabic in small irre- 
gular masses, or rough pieces, of pale yellowish colour, 
and roundish shape. 
It is, however, to be remarked, that, by far the 
greatest part of the gum which is sold in the shops 
under this name is not such, but is the production of 
another species of tree (Mimosa Senegal), and is pro- 
