MECCA OR BUSSORAH GALLS. 
267 
galls were imported among a parcel of 108 bags of the com- 
mon nutgalls. Both bags were slightly damaged. Being 
unknown in the London market, they were bought in at 
40s. per cwt., while the genuine nutgalls fetched 115s. per 
cwt. It is stated by the brokers, that the Bussorah galls 
are alone' used in the country where they are produced, for 
dyeing, and^that they are more estimated there than com- 
comon nutgalls. 
According to Mr. Lambert these galls are the far-famed 
mad apples [Mala insana) or apples of Sodom (Poma 
Sodomitica) mentioned by Josephus and many other 
writers. In the Book of Wisdom (chap. x. verse 7) these 
apples are described as " fruit that never come to ripeness," 
and in various old authors we are told that the fruit, though 
beautiful to the eye, crumbles at the touch to dust and 
bitter ashes. Milton in the tenth hook of his Paradise 
Lost, compares the trees which resembled the forbidden 
tree of knowledge, as being 
K like that which grew, 
Near that bituminous lake where Sodom flamed." 
Various opinions have been held respecting the nature of 
these apples. Hasselquist thought they were the fruit of 
Solanum Melongena (egg-plant nightshade, or mad-apple.) 
Seetzen considered them to be the fruit of a species of cot- 
ton-tree, and Chateaubriand thinks that they are a fruit like 
the Egyptian lemon, with a blackish seed, but whose name 
he does not mention. — Ibid. 
