474 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
March 23. 
call it, though the interpreters of our Bible adopted the 
name, is difficult to explain. Aloe, however, we may 
observe, is the Hebrew name deprived of its initial and 
final letters. 
We find that the Tradescants, those “ treasurers of 
Nature’s rarities," had “ Agalloclium" among the woods 
(Ligna) enumerated in their Catalogue of the Musaum 
Tradescantiamm (p. 31). Of this very specimen we 
have the following narrative by Parkinson, under the 
title of “ Agallochum or Lignum Aloes.” “ I have 
seen with Master Tradescant, the elder, before he died, 
a great piece of true Lignum Aloes, and of the best 
sort, as big and as long as a man’s leg, without any 
knot therein, which, as he said, our King Charles gave 
him with his own hands, but was bere kept before, and 
accounted by many as a great religious relic, even to be 
a piece of the wood of that Cross whereon our Saviour 
was crucified, and therefore was fetched away again 
from his son (Tradescant junior) to be kept as a monu¬ 
ment or relic still.” (Theatrum Botanicum. 1505.) 
This Agalloclium, we are of opinion, was the wood of 
one or other of the two trees now called by botanists 
Aquilaria agalloclm and Aloexylon agallochum. The 
first belongs to the Natural Order of Terebinths, or 
Turpentines, and the second to the Legumes, or Pod- 
bearers. They are both of the Linnaean class and order 
Decandria Monogynia. The following note by Mr. Don 
is applicable to each of these trees:—The wood is white, 
and has long been used as a perfume. Aloes wood is 
held in high estimation in the East on account of its 
fragrant odour, and as a perfume is applied to clothes 
and apartments, as well as a cordial medicine in fainting 
fits, and in cases of paralytic affection. By the Chinese 
and other heathens it was used as incense at their 
sacrifices.-: 1 In the East Indies it was formerly deemed 
of greater value than gold, and various fables have been 
invented as to the origin of the tree that yields it. Some 
have feigned that it grew in Paradise, and that it was 
conveyed from thence by the rivers overflowing their 
banks and sweeping away the trees. ( Don's Dichlamy- 
deous Plants, ii. 464.) 
A perfume so precious, and of such imagined origin, 
may well have found praise in the verses of the Hebrew 
Poet; may well have been selected by the prophet as a 
simile for the tents of Israel; and may well have been 
selected as appropriate for embalming the body of 
our Lord. 
It is no valid objection that the trees we have named 
are natives of the East Indies, for we have abundant 
proof that for such costly products of the East the 
merchants of Tyre visited and trafficked with the inha¬ 
bitants of India. We have had occasion to notice this 
traffic in our notes upon the Almug, and shall have to 
notice it further when remarking upon the Calamus 
It is an erroneous induction that by Aloes some 
native tree of the Holy Land must have been intended, 
otherwise Balaam, in his prophetic simile, would not 
* Hay, in his Historia Plantarum, ii. 1808, says, It is very costly, and 
on that account was strewed on the funeral pile of the Princes and 
Priests of India. 
have compared to such trees the tents of Israel. So far 
is this from being the case, that we find in these highly | 
poetized utterances the most costly products are referred j 
to without any restriction as to the place of their birth, j 
Thus Solomon, when narrating the plants of his ideal 
gardens, brings together with Pomegranates and other i 
products of the temperate zone, Calamus and Cinnamon, 
which live only beneath a tropical sun. ( Canticles iv. | 
13, &c.) 
Balaam, in the simile alluded to, said that the 
Israelitish tents were “ as the trees of the Lign Aloes 
w r hich the Lord had planted.” That is, which grew 
vigorously and naturally. Thus in another place it is 
said, “ The trees of the Lord are full of sap, the Cedars 
of Lebanon, which he hath planted” (Psalm civ. 16). 
Under the term sap is included all the liquid products 
of a plant; and it may be noticed that the value-of the 
wood of the Aquilaria and of the Aloexylon are just in 
proportion to their size, or vigorous growth, and the 
resinous secretions which they contain. 
Oor country friends, who drink each out of his own 
well and his own cistern, have a great advantage over 
the' inhabitants of large towns—an advantage increasing 
in proportion to their nearness to the natural sources of 
rivers, and consequent remoteness from river mouths- 
Good water is confessedly only one of a hundred indica¬ 
tions (natural, moral, social, and, we may safely add, 
political and religious 4) which we are bound to follow 
out and adopt, if we hope materially to improve our 
sanitary condition; and its influence is much more in¬ 
direct than has been taken for granted; yet no readier 
test suggests itself to us of the advancement of a refined 
and intelligent civilisation than the care bestowed on 
an artificial water supply; a subject which we hope to 
resume in a future paper. 
Dr. Kidd says, in his “ Treatise on the Adaptation of 
External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man,’’ 
“Although there is scarcely any substance which water 
is not capable of dissolving to a certain extent, and, 
consequently, no natural form of water is pure, yet, in 
almost every instance, the natural forms of water are 
not only innocuous but salutary.” And Dr. Smith, in 
a paper read at Edinburgh, before the British Associa¬ 
tion, has proved that well water is ordinarily freed from 
accidental pollutions in the process of filtering through 
the earth. When, unfortunately, from long occupation, 
or neglect, or other causes, the whole subsoil where we 
inhabit has become so charged with animal and vege¬ 
table refuse and corruption that the very water of our 
wells is tainted, it is obvious that the purest water 
brought from a distance can be no more than a pallia- i 
* The following is from that portion of the Report of the College of 
Physicians contributed by Dr. Gall. “ The immunity of the Jews in this 
metropolis was better ascertained, and, according to good authority, , 
depended upon their attention to hygiene (or rather to their sacred law.) I 
Their houses are cleansed annually, and are not overcrowded. They are, j 
as a class, sober, and in their diet, scrupulous. There is no extreme J 
destitution among them, their wealthy classes relieving those in distress. [ 
Their Sabbath is rigidly observed as a day of rest.— Page 160 , Reports I 
on Epidemic Cholera to the Royal College of Physicians , by Dr. Baley | 
and Dr. Oall. 
