MANNA, a name for several substances, es pecially a saccharine matter which exudes natu rally or from incisions made in the trunk and branches of a species of ash (Fraxinus ornus). It first appears as a whitish juice, thickens on being exposed to the air and when dried forms a whitish or reddish granular substance, which is the manna of commerce. The tree is a native of Italy and is cultivated extensively in Sicily. June and July are the two months in which the manna is collected. It is detached from the trees with wooden knives and is afterward ex posed to the sun for dryihg. A little rain, or even a thick fog, will often occasion the loss of the collections of a whole day. The taste is sweet and slightly nauseous. It is a mild pur gative and is principally administered to chil dren. The finest kind of manna is called flake manna; it is white or yellowish-white in color, light, porous and friable. Sicilian manna is generally found in small, soft, round frag ments; its color is yellowish-brown and it is generally mixed with more or less impurities. The principal constituent is mannite, chemically separable as a white crystalline substance of a sweetish taste, which also appears as a whitish efflorescence on certain edible seaweeds and fungi. To this and the saccharine elements, the nutritiousness of manna is due.
Many other sweet tree-juices go by the name of manna, or false manna, since they contain no mannite, but depend for their peculiar quali ties upon the possession of melitose or meletzi tose. In many cases the exudation of the sap is due to the irritation produced by insects or is the product of the insects themselves. Thus edible exudations are obtained from the Ori ental teatree, sandal-wood and an Australian grass (Andropogon) ; in Europe from the larch and an oak, and in Persia from the camel's thorn. American manna is derived in Califor
nia from the sugar pine and from a rush (Phragmites); while in India a species of bam boo secretes it so copiously as to form an im portant food-resource for the people in periods of famine.
The tamarisk manna, derived from the tam arisk trees about tthe eastern end of the Medi terranean, is not a direct product of the tree, hut of a scale-insect, the manna-insect (Jossy traria mannifera), which abounds upon the tamarisk and secretes the substance, which some persons have regarded as the manna of the Bible. In Australia the waxen larval cases of several species of flea-lice (Psyllidce) that feed upon the gum-trees (Eucalyptus) are gathered and eaten by the natives under the name of The Scriptural manna (Heb. Man-hu, what is it?) is described in Exodus (xvi, 15) as cov ering the ground in such quantities as to supply food for the vast multitude of the Israelites. It was small and round like coriander seed, white and tasting like honey and wafer. It was of the color of bdellium (Num. vi, 7). Ac cording to the Biblical narrative it was the food of the Children of Israel for 40 years. They complained of the diet (Num. xi, 6). In Rab binical literature there are a vast number of stories about the manna hard to accept except as myths. It cannot be identified with any of the substances known nowadays as manna; but is called in the Bible "bread from while the Jewish doctors taught that it became to each person who ate it that meat of What ever kincl•he liked best.