Page:Chronicles of pharmacy (Volume 1).djvu/77

 "manhu," food, as a probable explanation. The Arabic word for the manna of Sinai is still "man." This is the substance which scientific investigators have agreed is the manna described in Exodus. It is an exudation from the Tamarisk mannifera, a shrub which grows in the valleys of the Sinai peninsula, the manna being yielded from the young branches after the punctures of certain insects. Another Eastern manna, a Persian product from a leguminous plant, Alhagi Maurorum, and a manna yielded by an evergreen oak in Kurdistan, are still sold and used in some Eastern countries for food and medicine. But in Europe, and to some extent in the East also, Sicilian manna, the product of an ash tree, Fraxinus ornus, has displaced the old sorts since the fifteenth century. The commerce in this article and its history were investigated by Mr. Daniel Hanbury and described by him in Science Papers and in Pharmacographia.

The rabbinical legends concerning the manna of the wilderness are many and strange. One is to the effect that when it lay on the ground all the kings of the East and of the West could see it from their palace windows. According to Zabdi ben Levi it was provided in such abundance that it covered every morning an area of 2,000 cubits square and was 60 cubits in depth. Each day's fall was sufficient to nourish the camp for 2,000 years. The Book of Wisdom (xvi, 20, 21) tells us that the manna so accommodated itself to every taste that it proved palatable and pleasing to all. "Able to content every man's delight, and agreeing to every taste." The rabbinical legends enlarge this statement and assure us that to those Israelites who did not murmur the manna became fish, flesh, fowl at will. This is in a degree