72 
SELECTED ARTICLES. 
a more bitter taste. If kept for a year, it acquires a feeble 
yellow color." 
It follows from these passages of Mathiolus, that, in oppo- 
sition to the authority of Galen, and the physicians who re- 
garded the resin of the larch a suitable substitute for Chian 
turpentine, and place it in the first rank of indigenous tur- 
pentines, in his time, the turpentine of the fir was more es- 
teemed, and of higher price. It was only the most transpa- 
rent, and repeatedly strained turpentine of the larch, that could 
be mistaken for it, and yet this could be recognised by its 
greater liquidity, its infinitely more agreeable odor, and its 
more bitter taste, (this last character is inexact.) Again: 
much noise has been made in all the books on the Materia 
Medica, with respect to the Venice turpentine, which was 
the most beautiful of all, (always Chian turpentine excepted) 
and which on this account alone, has always been attributed 
to the larch. Well! this Venice turpentine was nothing else 
but that of the fir, as has been proved by Belon, in his work 
upon the Coniferae, published in 1553. 
" A great fraud (Belon tells us,) is committed daily by many 
persons, who openly employ the oily resin of fir, in place of 
turpentine. The true turpentine is neither liquid or entirely 
solid, but presents an intermediate consistence. Yet, like all 
other resins, it hardens by age. The resin of fir would never 
run from the tree, if it were not extracted artificially. 
The people in Italy, name it olio d'aveto, which is oil of fir. 
The French call it, Venice turpentine, to distinguish it 
from the larch, which they call common turpentine. The 
oily resin of the fir is extracted in the following manner: 
the herdsmen, that they may not be idle, frequent the place 
where the young firs grow, provided with a horn. They 
know that the firs with smooth bark abound with vesicles, 
while on the contrary the rugged bark of the old trees, is des- 
titute of them. They then press the vesicles of the young 
trees, with the edge of the horn. However diligent they 
may be in this operation, they can scarcely collect more than 
four ounces of resin per day, for each vesicle does not contain 
