HIMALAYAN  MUSK  DEER,  ETC. 
261 
"I  send  you  an  account  of  the  season's  produce — viz.  120 
pods,  which  weigh  about  110  to  120  ounces  or  more,  as  they  are 
large.  The  small  ones  being  nearly  all  skin,  I  thought  it  ad- 
visable to  let  the  natives  have  them  to  dress  in  their  way  and  to 
sell  to  natives.'* 
The  musk  pod  familiar  to  us  all  is  this  membranous  bladder, 
cut  from  the  deer  with  a  portion  of  the  outer  skin  ;  it  is  pressed 
and  stitched  up,  and  dried  on  a  hot  stone.  By  this  continued 
heat  much  of  its  odor  is  driven  oflf,  and  it  is  consequently  de- 
prived of  its  qualities  as  a  remedial  agent,  and  for  the  use  of  the 
perfumer  greatly  deteriorated.  A  large  quantity  of  musk  col- 
lected by  natives,  which  is  invariably  falsified,  finds  its  way  to 
this  and  other  countries.  They  cut  the  young  pods,  containing 
no  musk  at  all,  as  before  mentioned,  and  fill  them  with  the  liver 
and  blood  of  the  animal,  mixed  with  this  yellow  fluid  and  a  small 
portion  of  genuine  musk,  fill,  and  sew  them  up  in  the  skin,  and 
dry  on  the  hot  stone  ;  or  those  which  yield  half  a  drachm  to  a 
drachm  they  mix  and  dry  in  like  manner. 
At  one  of  the  Government  sales  in  India  of  presents  given  by 
native  princes,  there  were  many  pods  of  musk,  to  appearance 
very  fine,  which  proved  to  be  nearly  worthless ;  they  had  evi- 
dently been  made  up,"  and  from  long  keeping  the  little  real 
musk  they  contained  had  considerably  evaporated. 
It  would  be  a  difficult  matter  for  a  native  to  resist  the  temp- 
tation of  not  making  some  addition  even  to  the  finest  pods,  or  of 
extracting  a  portion  and  filling  it  up  with  the  mixture  of  blood 
and  liver. 
The  interior  of  the  Himalayas  where  the  supply  is  obtained  is 
towards  Ladak,  Thibet,  and  Chinese  Tartary,  and,  as  these 
mountains  extend  over  so  many  thousand  miles,  it  is  probable 
that  the  musks  known  as  China,  Nepaul,  and  other  musks,  and 
perhaps  some  Russian,  are  from  the  same  districts.  The  Tartar 
tribes  wander  from  place  to  place,  bartering  with  the  natives  of 
these  several  countries  who  have  access  to  these  regions.  Hence 
the  musk  would  be  from  the  same  species,  the  difference  in  ap- 
pearance being  caused  by  its  varying  age  and  mode  of  preparing 
and  drying. 
The  genuineness  of  musk  depends  on  the  honesty  of  the  na- 
