a vegetable production of the gum or resin kind, issuing by incision, and sometimes spontaneously, from the trunk and larger branches of a tree growing in Egypt, Arabia, and Abyssinia. The incisions are made twice a-year, and the myrrh oozing out is received on rush-mats dispersed underneath.

Myrrh is sent over to us in loose granules of various sizes, from that of a pepper-corn, to the bigness of a walnut. The generality of them, however, are from the size of a pea, to a little more than that of a horse-bean: these are sometimes roundish, but often irregularly long and contorted. The colour of myrrh is a reddish-brown, with more or less of an admixture of yellow, and in the purest pieces it is somewhat transparent. Its taste is bitter and acid, with a peculiar aromatic flavour, but very nauseous; but its smell, though strong, is not disagreeable. It is to be chosen in clear pieces, light, friable, and of the bitterest taste. Myrrh is of great use in medicine; it powerfully resolves and attenuates thick and viscid blood, and concreted bile, and glutinous humours, and is good in ob-

structions of the menes, and in inflammations of the will-

cera.