y
Kempthorne, and Vaughan of the same service, and by Cruttenden himself.
Captain Haines also in his report of the Survey of the Hadhramaut coast in
1843-1844[2] speaks, apparently as an eyewitness, of the frankincense
trees about Dhafar as extremely numerous, and adds that from 3000 to
10,000 _maunds_ were annually exported "from Merbat and Dhafar." "3 to 10"
is vague enough; but as the kind of _maund_ is not specified it is vaguer
still. Maunds differ as much as _livres Francais_ and _livres sterling_.
In 1844 and 1846 Dr. Carter also had opportunities of examining olibanum
trees on this coast, which he turned to good account, sending to
Government cuttings, specimens, and drawings, and publishing a paper on
the subject in the Journal of the Bombay Branch of the R. As. Society
(1847).

[Illustration: The Harvest of Frankincense in Arabia. Facsimile of an
engraving in Thevet's _Cosmographie Universelle_ (1575), reproduced from
the _Bible Educator_.[3]]

But neither Dr. Carter's paper and specimens, nor the previous looser
notices of the naval officers, seemed to attract any attention, and men of
no small repute went on repeating in their manuals the old story about
Indian olibanum. Dr. G. Birdwood however, at Bombay, in the years
following 1859, took up the subject with great zeal and intelligence,
procuring numerous specimens of the Sumali trees and products; and his
monograph of the genus _Boswellia_ in the Linnaean Transactions (read
April 1869), to which this note is very greatly indebted, is a most
interesting paper, and may be looked on, I believe, as embodying the most
correct knowledge as yet attainable. The species as ranked in his table
are the following:

[Illustration: Boswellia Frereana (_Birdw._).
1. _Boswellia Carterii_ (Birdw.), including the Arabian tree of
Dhafar, and the larger variety called _Mohr Madau_ by the Sumalis.
2. _B. Bhau-dajiana_ (Birdw.), _Mohr A'd_ of the Sumalis.
3. _B. papyrifera_ (Richard). Abyssinian species.
4. _B. thurifera_ (Colebr.), see p. 396 supra.
5. _B. Frereana_ (Birdw.), _Yegar_ of the Sumalis--named after
Mr. William Frere, Member of Council at Bombay. No. 2 was named from Bhau
Daji, a very eminent Hindu scholar and physician at Bombay (Birdw.).]

No. 1 produces the Arabian olibanum, and Nos. 1 and 2 together the bulk of
the olibanum exported from the Sumali coast under the name _Luban-Shehri_.
Both are said to give an inferior kind besides, called _L. Bedawi_. No.