134 
ON THE TURPENTINES. 
brought to France ; once it had been given to me for Tacca- 
maha, and I described it under this name in the second edi- 
tion of the Historie, &c. Afterwards, I met with it in the 
cabinet of the School of Pharmacy, contained in the bark men- 
tioned, and still more recently, M. Ramon delaSagra, brought 
from the island of Cuba, among a great number of other pro- 
ducts, the same fragrant resin, produced by a pine of Cuba, of 
which he had not been able to determine the species. This 
resin was in pretty large spherical tears, of a dull reddish as- 
pect externally, but whitish, opaque, and of a smooth fracture 
internally. Its powder has the color of brick-dust. Its solu- 
tion in alcohol was complete, even to the whole almost of the 
impurities. 
I speak of this substance in connection with the pitch of the 
Abies excelsa, because, according to Haller, cited by Murray, 
the resin which exudes spontaneously through the bark of this 
tree, concretes under the form of tears, which exhale an agree- 
able odor when burnt ; from which arises the appellation of 
incense, (in Swedish, gran kada,) because this resin, by dry- 
ing upon the tree, assumes in part, as we have seen, the red 
color, and peculiar odor of Russian incense ; and finally, be- 
cause this is contained in a red compact bark, which appears 
to me to be that of the A. excelsa ; a fact which still further 
establishes the presumption that it is the product of this tree. 
Murray, however, adds that, according to other individuals, 
this incense is the product of the wild pine, and we have said 
that in Russia, as in Cuba, it is attributed to a pine : the two 
opinions are therefore equal as regards value. 
I was endeavoring to enlighten myself upon this subject, 
when, upon examining in the Royal Garden, the trunks of 
some trees which had been felled, I found one of them cover- 
ed with resinousexcrescences resembling completely that form- 
ing the subject of this note. By singular chance, a gardener, 
when interrogated, replied at once it was a fir tree, which af- 
forded weight to the opinion of Haller ; but farther investiga- 
tion, which was more precise, proved to me that it was the 
trunk of the Pinus larix, and I found another still standing 
