the great height of one hundred and twenty feet, having a trunk of twelve feet in girth. In Asam it is of still larger growth. The bark of the trunk is smooth and ash-coloured; that of the branches grey, lightly striped with brown. The branches themselves are each divided into two at the extremities, and the young shoots are covered with white silky hairs. The wood is white, and very light and soft. It is totally without smell, and the leaves, bark, and flowers also. The leaves are of a beautiful deep shiny green, lance-shaped, and from three to six inches long. The flowers, which are small and yellowish, grow in tassels of thirty or forty together, almost close to the branches, and between the alternate footstalks of the leaves. The fruit is a sort of downy pale-green berry, containing two cells for seeds, one of which is often empty. The incense, or perfume of the lign aloes is procured from the wood when in a peculiar state, and the procuring it is a precarious and tedious business. Few trees contain any of it; and such as do, have it very partially distributed in the trunk and branches.

"The people employed in cutting it go two or three days' journey into the hill country, and hew down without choice all the trees, young and old, fresh and withered, the latter being much preferred. In order to find the fragrant part, the moment a tree is felled they chip off the bark, and cut into the wood, until they find some dark-coloured vein, which generally encloses, in the very centre of the trunk or branch, a hollow wherein is deposited the oily substance sought for. This dark portion of the tree sinks immediately in water, and fetches a high price. That which is next, and retains some of the perfume, sinks, but not deep;-and there are still two other portions of different degrees of scent, which are saleable, though they fetch only one-sixteenth of the price of the first.

"It appears that the decay of the timber necessary to form the secretion of the fragrant oil is hastened by

burying it in moist ground for a time. When dug up, the dark parts are found to have acquired, besides a deeper colour, a glossy appearance, and the whole sinks in water; the precious veins are separated from the less valuable portion with an iron instrument, and the rest of the wood is sorted into the three inferior kinds, as in the naturally decayed trees. The oil is extracted by bruising the wood, and then laying it in water; after which the whole is distilled, and the produce of the still in cooling yields the essential oil. An inferior perfume is prepared from the remainder of the aloe-wood after its first distillation, with the addition of a few bruised almonds, or powdered sandal-wood.

"Some of the choicest pieces of the aloes sell for their weight in gold. They seem to have no smell, until warmed by holding in the hand, when they become dewy, and exhale a most delicious odour, which does not soon go off. Some fragments of a piece of the wood which had been in England several years, and appeared to have lost its smell, were burnt in a room, when at first they appeared to give out no fragrance, but shortly afterwards the perfume was perceived, and it did not go off for some time.

"This tree yields also a valuable medicine."-See Scripture Herbal, pp. 235-242.

ANISE.

MATTHEW Xxiii. 23.

"Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint, and anise, and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith."

"The seeds of this herb have a pleasant smell, and are often chewed by the inhabitants of Eastern countries, to sweeten the breath,—a large kind of anise grows in England, but its seeds are not much thought of, and a great quantity of them are imported from Malta for the apothecary's use, as they are still used as a good stomachic. Pliny tells us that in ancient times, no kitchen was without a good supply of anise, which was used as a pot-herb, green or dry, and in sauces, &c."

BALM.

GENESIS XXXvii. 25.

Behold, a company of Ishmeelites came from Gilead, with their camels bearing spicery and balm, and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt."

xliii. 11.

"Carry down the man a present... a little balm, &c."

JEREMIAH viii. 22; xlvi. 11.

"Is there no balm in Gilead?"

li. 8.

"Take balm for her pain, if so be she may be healed."

This tree, which produces the precious balsam, or balm of Gilead, is not a native of that country. It has

no where been found wild, except on the African coast of the Red Sea. Its produce is mentioned as an article of merchandize, in the book of Genesis-and Josephus says that the Queen of Sheba presented some plants of it to Solomon. The road by which the balsam reached Greece and Rome is pointed out by Ezekiel, who says that Israel and Judah supplied the markets of Tyre with it, and the merchants frequenting Tyre carried it, of course, further west. So highly prized was the balsam, that, during the war of Titus against the Jews, two fierce contests took place for the balsam orchards of Jericho; the last of which was to prevent the Jews from destroying the trees, which they would have done in order that the trade might not fall into the enemy's hands.... An imperial guard was appointed to watch over them... but such care has been unavailing ; not a root nor a branch of the balsam tree is now to be found in all Palestine.

Twice was a balsam tree exhibited in triumph to the Romans in their streets. The first time was sixty-five years before the coming of our Lord, when Pompey returned from his conquest, and Judæa first became a Roman province, and the last time was, after a lapse of one hundred and forty-four years, when the spoils of the temple of Jerusalem were borne in triumph through the imperial city; and, as a sign of the subjection of the whole country, the precious balm-tree was exhibited with pride by Vespasian. The great traveller Bruce saw the balsam-tree in some valleys in Arabia. The most considerable garden of them is in a recess of the mountains, between Mecca and Medina. The balm of Gilead is a small ever-green tree,—at five feet from the ground it branches out something like an old hawthorn, but the foliage is scanty and ragged. The bark is smooth, shining, and of a whitish grey colour, with brown blotches. The leaves are of a bright green, and grow in threes and fives.

The greatest quantity of the balsam flows from the wounded bark. But there are three kinds procured by