Gum Ammoniacum.
Our endeavours to obtain accurate information regarding the Marocco gum ammoniac plant were ceaseless and fruitless. Jackson, who gives a rude figure of a portion of a leaf and a scanty description (‘Account of the Empire of Marocco,’ 136, t. 7), says that it is the produce of a plant like Fennel, but larger, and called Fashook in Arabic, and that it grows in the plains of the interior provinces, abounding in the north of the city of Marocco, in a sandy light soil. Jackson further states that neither bird nor beast is seen where this plant grows, the vulture only excepted, and that it is attacked by a beetle having a long horn proceeding from its nose, with which it perforates the plant, and makes the incisions whence the gum oozes out. Under his description of the vulture, he states that, with the exception of the ostrich, this is the largest bird in Marocco; that it is common in all places where the gum ammoniac grows, as in the plains east of El Araiche,[1] where he has seen at least twenty of these birds in the air at once, darting down on the insects with astonishing rapidity (p. 118). Jackson’s figure (t. 8) of the so-called beetle apparently represents a dipterous insect resembling a Bombylius, with a very long straight proboscis.
Lindley (‘Flora Medica,’ 46) doubtfully refers Jackson’s Fashook to the eastern Ferula orientalis L.; and Flückiger and Hanbury (‘Pharmacographie,’ 289) say that, according to Lindley, the Ferula tingitana yields a milky gum resin, having some resemblance to Ammoniacum, which is an object of traffic with Egypt and Arabia, where it is employed like the ancient drug in fumigations. The authors go on to say that there can be but little doubt that the Maroccan Ammoniacum is identical with that of the ancients, and that it may well have been imported by way of Cyrene from regions lying farther westward.
Pliny and Dioscorides say that the Ammoniacum is the juice of a Narthex growing about Cyrene and Libya, and that it is produced in the neighbourhood of the temple of Ammon.
Dr. Leared (‘Morocco and the Moors,’ 356) was informed that the Fashook grows at a place two days’ journey from Mogador, on the road to the city of Marocco,[2] but states that the exudation from the roots of specimens which he obtained differed from the African Ammoniacum. We, on the other hand, were persistently assured that it grew nowhere along that route, nor nearer to it than El Araiche, north of Marocco city. And this is confirmed by information obtained by Mr. R. Drummond Hay to the effect that it is found near Marocco, and chiefly around Tedla. The Moors who gave us this information at once recognised the figure by Jackson, and called the plant Kilch (Kelth according to Leared). The roots presented to Kew by the kindness of Dr. Leared did not make any indications of growth.
The Maroccan Ammoniacum plant must not be confounded with the Persian Dorema Ammoniacum, or ‘Ushak,’ which is also bled by insects.
The Fashook gum is used by the Moors and by some Orientals as a depilatory, and in skin diseases; it is exported to the East from Mazagan, viâ Gibraltar and Alexandria.
Euphorbium, Furbiune or Dergmuse.
Euphorbia resinifera.—Berg. und Schmidt, Officinelle Gerwächse, v. iv. (1863) xxxiv. d.; Flückiger and Hanbury, Pharmacographia, 502; Cosson, in Bull. Soc. Bot. Fr. xxi. 163; Ball, in Journ. Linn. Soc. Bot. xvi. 661; Euphorbium, Jackson’s ‘Account of the Empire of Marocco,’ 134, t. 6 (left-hand figure only).
We have little to add to the description of the Euphorbium tree given by Jackson, and that in the ‘Pharmacographia’ cited above. As stated in the body of this work it is confined to the interior of the empire, and the only living specimens we met with were from a garden in Mesfiouia (see [p. 163]). Jackson confounded two plants under this name; one, the true species, growing in the Atlas, with 3-4-angled branches, the other a sea-coast plant, with 9-10-angled branches, which is carried to Marocco for tanning purposes, and of which he says, that during the three years of his residence at Agadir he never saw any gum upon it.