5 is
distinctly a new species, and affords a highly fragrant resin sold under
the name of Luban Meti.
Bombay is now the great mart of frankincense. The quantity exported thence
in 1872-1873 was 25,000 cwt., of which nearly one quarter went to China.
Frankincense when it first exudes is milky white; whence the name "White
Incense" by which Polo speaks of it. And the Arabic name luban
apparently refers to milk. The Chinese have so translated, calling
Ju-siang or Milk-perfume.
Polo, we see, says the tree was like a fir tree; and it is remarkable that
a Chinese Pharmacology quoted by Bretschneider says the like, which looks
as if their information came from a common source. And yet I think Polo's
must have been oral. One of the meanings of Luban, from the Kamus, is
Pinus (Freytag). This may have to do with the error. Dr. Birdwood, in a
paper Cassells' Bible Educator, has given a copy of a remarkable wood
engraving from Thevet's Cosmographie Universelle (1575), representing
the collection of Arabian olibanum, and this through his kind intervention
I am able to reproduce here. The text (probably after Polo) speaks of the
tree as resembling a fir, but in the cut the firs are in the background;
the incense trees have some real suggestion of Boswellia, and the whole
design has singular spirit and verisimilitude.
Dr. Birdwood thus speaks of the B. Frereana, the only species that he
has seen in flower:
