126 
ON MANNA. 
is then sweeter and more agreeable, but is at all times slightly 
nauseous. 
Men and women are indifferently employed in collecting 
the manna. The same knife which makes the incision serves 
also to gather the manna. The collected manna is deposited 
in baskets and carried away to the magazine where they dis- 
pose of it, and whence it is sent away in great quantities to 
foreign countries. 
If the season is not favorable — if the heat is not steady and 
without rain — the people complain greatly ; and if there ap- 
pears the least disorder in the atmosphere, the saints and the 
madonnas are assailed with cries and tears from all parts, 
prayers are addressed to them, and wax tapers are offered 
at their shrines, for the grant or continuance of fair weather. 
The manna formed a principal source of emolument to the 
parts of Sicily in which it was cultivated in the time of JVI. Houel ; 
and the inhabitants were distinguished from those of other 
parts of that country by their comfortable and pleasing appear- 
ance. The medical properties of manna are those of a gentle 
purgative, particularly adapted to the use of children, and it 
was accordingly much employed formerly in medical practice. 
But it has now gone nearly into disuse, as we are in posses- 
sion of so many substances that are more efficacious. This 
circumstance has probably had considerable effect on the pros- 
perity of the places which were formerly enriched by the cul- 
ture of the manna tree. The drug was some time since sub- 
jected to chemical analysis by M. Bouillon la Grange, who 
found it to consist of two distinct substances, one nearly re- 
sembling sugar, and the other probably analogous to gum or 
mucilage, as, when treated with nitric acid, it was found to 
yield the mucous acid. 
We may be at liberty to doubt the following pretty story 
concerning manna, even though we find it in Jeremy Taylor. 
" When the kings of Naples enclosed the gardens of (Enotria, 
where the best manna of Calabria descends, that no man 
might gather it without paying tribute, the manna ceased till 
the tribute was taken off, and then it came again; and so, 
