SPICES. This word, which occurs very lie quently in the A. V., has usually been consideled to indicate several of the aromatic substances to which the same general name is applied in the present day. The Hebrew words so translated are NECOTH, BOSEM, and SAmmtm, the corresponding Greek being tipcoi24. These may indicate different things, as the two first words, or be merely different names, as spices and aromatics in English may be applied to the same kind of substances. Sammim, rendered in Exod. xxx. 7 incense, and in ver. 34 spkes, may be supposed to mean drugs and aro matics in general. When these are separately noticed, especially when several are enumerated, their names may lead us to their identification. Dr. Vincent has observed that in Exod. xxx. we find an enumeration of cinnamon, cassia, myrrh, frank incense, stacte, onycha, and galbanum, all of which are the produce either of India or Arabia.' More correctly, cinnamon, cassia, frankincense, and onycha, were probably obtained from India ; myrrh, stacte, and some frankincense, from the east coast ot Africa, and gal banum from Persia.' Nine hun dred years later, or about B.C. 54 in Ezek. xxvii. tbe chief spices are referred to, with the addition however of calamus. They are probably the same as those just enumerated. Dr. Vincent refers chiefly to the Periplus, ascribed to Arrian, written in the 2c1 century, as furnishing a proof that many Indian substances were, at that time, well known to commerce, as aloe or agila wood, gum bdellium, the googal of India, c2,ssia and cinnamon, nard, costus, incense—that is, olibanum, ginger, pepper, and spices. If we examine the work of Dioscorides we shall find all these, and several other Indian products, not only mentioned, but described, as schcenanthus, calamus aromaticus, cyperus, roala bathrum, turmeric. Among others, Lycium indi
cum is mentioned. Tbis is tbe extract of barberry root, and is prepared in the IIimalayan mountains (Royle on the Lycium of Dioscorides, Linnean Trans.) It is not unworthy of notice, that we find no mention of several very remarkable products of the East, such as camphor, cloves, nutmeg, betel leaf, cubebs, gamboge ; all of which are so pecu liar in their nature that we could not have failed to recognise them if they had been described at all, like those we have enumerated as the produce of India. These omissions are significant of the countries to which commerce and navigation had not extended, at the time when the other articles were well know (Hindoo Medicine, p. 93). If we trace these up to still earlier authors, we shall find many of them mentioned by Theophrastus, and even by Hippocrates ; and if we trace them down wards to the time of the Arabs [SPIKENARD], and from that to modern times, we find many of them described under their present names in works cur rent throughout the East, and in which their ancient names are given as synonyms. We have, therefore, as much assurance as is possible in such cases, that the majority of the substances mentioned by the ancients have been identified ; and that among the spices of early times were included many of those which now form articles of commerce from India to Europe. This has been shown in the articles on the different substances [AHALIAL ;