king of Judah, succeeded his father Abijam. He pulled down the altars erected to idols, restored the worship of the true God, and, with the assistance of Benhadad king of Syria, took several towns from the king of Israel. He died 917 years before the Christian era, and was succeeded by Jehoshaphat.

among naturalists. The writers of the later ages have formed this word afa from the lafar of the ancients, and attributed it to a gum very different from that anciently known by the name they have thus corrupted.

The afa of the ancients was an odoriferous and fragrant gum; and the afa of the after ages had so little title to this epithet, that they distinguished it by one, expressing its being of an offensive or flanking smell. The Arabian writers, according to this distinction, describe two kinds of afa, the one flanking, the other aromatic; and the modern Greeks preferred the name afa, or lafar, to the flanking gum the Latins called by that name, but added a distinctive epithet to express its smell, and called it scardola afrum.

ASA or Assa, in the Materia Medica, a name given to two very different substances, called afa-dulcis and afa-fastida.

ASA-Dulcis is the same with Benzoin.

ASA-Fastida is the concrete juice of an umbelliferous plant growing in several parts of Asia. See FERULA.

BOTANY and MATERIA MEDICA INDEX.