Bdellium

BDELLIUM, is a Gum which comes from a tree, that is very common in Arabia, and many other places of the East. Pliny saysm, that the best Bdellium comes Genes. ii. 11.from the Bactrian; that the tree, which produces it, is black, as large as an olive-tree with leaves like those of an oak, and fruit like that of the caper-tree. Bdellium should be transparent, and yellow as wax, bitter to the taste, and oily; it smells like the unguis odoratus, when it is burnt. There is Bdellium to be found likewise in the Indies, in Media and Babylonia. In Hebrew it is called Bdolack. Moses says, there is some of it in the country through which the river Pison runs, and that the Manna of the Israelites was of the colour of Bdellium, that is, inclining to yellow.

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