COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library

574 COSMOS,
tvellia thurifera of Colebrooke),*' myrrh, (a species of amyris,
first accurately described by Ehrenberg,) and the so-called
balsam of Mecca, (the balsamodendron gileadense, of
Kunth). These products constituted an important branch of
commerce between the contiguous tribes and the Egyptians,
Persians, and Indians, as well as the Greeks and Romans ;
fore the time of Abraham, and there founded flourishing kingdoms.
(Ewald, GeschicMe des Volkes Israel, Bd. i. s. 337 und 450.)
* The tree which furnishes the Arabian incense of Hadraniaut, cele-
brated from the earliest times, and which is never to be found in the Island
of Socotora, has not yet been discovered and determined by any botanist,
not even by the laborious investigator Ehrenberg. An article similar
to this incense is found in eastern India, and particularly in Bundelcund,
and is exported in considerable quantities from Bombay to
China. This Indian incense is obtained, according to Colebrooke (Asiatic
Researches, vol. ix. p. 377), from a plant made known by Roxburgh,
Boswellia thurifera, or serrafa, (included in Kunth's family of
BurseracecK). As from the very ancient commercial connections between
the coasts of southern Arabia and western India (Gildemeister, Scriptorum
Aralum Loci de rebus Indicis, p. 35), doubts might be entertained
as to whether the \ij3avog of Theophrastus, (the thus of the
Romans), belonged originally to the Arabian peninsula, Lassen's remark
(Indisclie AltertliumsJcunde, Bd. i. s. 286), that incense is called " ydwana,
Javanese, i. e., Arabian," in Amara-Koscha itself becomes very im-
portant apparently implying that this product is brought
to India from
Arabia. It is called Turuschka' pindaka' sihld, (three names signifying
incense,) "yawan6" in Amara-Koscha. (Amarakoclia, publ. par
A. Loiseleur Deslongchamps, P. i. 1839, p. 156.) Dioscorides also
distinguishes Arabian from Indian incense. Carl Ritter, in his excellent
monograph on the kinds of incense (Asien, Bd. viii. Abth. i. s.
356-372), remarks very justly, that, from the similarity of climate,
this species of plant (Boswellia thurifera,} might be diffused from India
through the south of Persia to Arabia. The American incense (Olibanum
americanum of our Pharmacopoeias,) is obtained from Idea gujanensis,
Aubl. and Idea taeamahaca, which Bonpland and myself fre-
quently found growing on the vast grassy plains (Llanos) of Calaboso,
in South America. Idea, like Boswellia, belongs to the family of
Burseracecz.
The red pine (Pinus dbies, Linn.,) produces the common incense
of our churches. The plant which bears myrrh, and which Bruce
thought he had seen, (Ainslie, Malaria Me.dica of Hindostan, Madras,
1813, p. 29), has been discovered by Ehrenberg, near el-Gisan in Arabia,
and has been described by Nees von Esenbeck from the specimens collected
by him, under the name of Balsamodendron myrrha. The
Balsamodendron Kotaf of Kunth, an Amyris of Forskaal, was long
erroneously regarded as the true myrrh-tree.