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ON MANNA. 
ART. XXVIII. — ON MANNA. 
The tree which produces the manna (Fraxinus ornus) is 
an ash of a peculiar quality, and is regarded by Linnaeus as a 
variety of the common ash, It is indigenous in the south of 
Italy and in Sicily; and the following account of it, as well 
as of the processes by which the manna is obtained, is taken 
chiefly from the "Voyage Pittoresque des Isles de Sicile, de 
Make, et de Lipari. Par Jean Houel, Peintre du Roi, en 
1776. " The tree rarely attains a greater height than twenty- 
five feet, and there is nothing particularly striking in its ap- 
pearance: it might, on the first view, be taken for a young 
elm; but, on more minute examination, its particular charac- 
ter is found in the manner in which the leaf is attached to 
the branch. Three species, or, more properly, three varieties 
of this tree have been observed. The first has the leaves long 
and straight, like those of the peach; in the second, the leaves 
strongly resemble those of the rose-tree; and the third seems 
intermediate between these two varieties. 
It is when the season is at the warmest that the tree most 
abounds in sap. Therefore, about the 15th of August the 
people begin to make their incisions in the bark. They com- 
mence at the foot, making an incision each day, over the pre- 
ceding, and at the distance of two inches from it, until they 
reach the lower branches. The incisions are little more than 
two inches in horizontal length, and are about half an inch in 
depth. When the season is favorable, they continue to make 
their incisions so far as the great branches; but though they 
make no more than one daily, they have, towards the end of 
September, already made forty-five, which at two inches dis- 
tance between them, gives an elevation of ninety inches ; and 
as there are few trunks which are more than seven and a half 
feet high, they rarely go to a greater distance. 
When the knife has with some difficulty made an incision 
