STORAX. Styrax officinalis,- Common Storax. Linnæan class and order, DECANDRIA MONOGYNIA. HH STORAX. Ecclus. xxiv. 15. THIS is a small tree with a smooth bark. The shoots are downy, and the deep green leaves are lined with white down. It bears a white flower, and is altogether pleasing to the eye. It is very common in Syria and Palestine, and grows all over the Levant, and in Greece and the Peloponnesus. The fragrant resinous balsamic substance called Storax is obtained from the branches of the Styrax by incision. It is of a brownish red colour, and crumbles like half-dry clay between the fingers, leaving an unctuous feeling behind. The Styrax will grow in England, but does not produce the drug. The medicinal preparations of Storax are various; but it is chiefly used for asthma, cough, and other similar disorders. Some have supposed that the first distillation of the Styrax, not the myrrh, is the true stacte. SYCAMORE. 1 Kings, x. 27.' 1 Chron. xxvii. 28. 2 Chron. i. 15.; ix. 27. St. Luke, xix. 4. Psalm lxxviii. 47. Isaiah, ix. 10. It is a pity that a misapplication of the name of Sycamore to the greater maple or Acer Pseudo-Platanus, instead of the wild fig, should have given a notion to all English Bible readers so opposite to the truth, as that our northern tree stood the heats of an Egyptian, or even of a Syrian, summer. It is believed by some naturalists, that the Ficus. Sycomorus, or Pharaoh's fig, is the only tree really indigenous in Lower Egypt. It abounded in that country, in Syria, and the larger islands of the Levant, in ancient times; but, Pliny says, was too delicate to bear the winters of Greece or Italy. It is still cultivated in the neighbourhood of Cairo, on account of the delicious shade it affords, rather than for the fruit, although that is of considerable value and importance in the country. The Ficus Sycomorus is an enormous tree, often measuring fifty feet in girth. The leaves have the glossy green of those of the pear tree, and are something larger. The fruit grows upon the main branches of the tree, and on the trunk itself, in clusters. It is very abundant, and yields its harvest several times in the year. The fresh fruit is rather insipid; it is soft, watery, and sweetish, with a slightly aromatic taste. When dry, it is greatly inferior in flavour to the garden fig; nevertheless it is highly prized in the Levant, and furnishes an agreeable and very considerable portion of the food of the field labourers in Rhodes, Cyprus, and Egypt. The ancient Egyptians and Cretans used a sort of iron rake, wherewith they scratched the young fruit, in order to wound the skin sufficiently to permit the entrance of a small black fly into the figs, which, it appears, secured and hastened their ripening; and something of the same kind, as we learn from Tournefort, is practised by the moderns. The wood of the Sycamore fig, or, as it is often called, Pharaoh's fig, is light, tough, and durable; fit for furniture and agricultural tools, and therefore invaluable in Egypt, where timber trees are almost unknown. |