226 PRODUCTS.

In some parts of the country, the mimosa fonns whole forests of vast extent; but the district of Bara furnishes the largest quantity of gum. The harvest is modified by the annual fall of rain, for, if it rain much, the trees sweat the more. The gum exudes from the bark of the stem and large branches, nearly in the same manner as the resinous exudation from the cherry-trees of Europe. In digging for a beetle, I casually observed that the g-um proceeds from the root also. Sennaar, which is situated under the same degree of latitude as Kordofan, yields a far less quantity of this product. The gathering takes place a few months after the rain, in the months of December, January, and February, it is an exceedingly profitable affair to the government, and therefore a monopoly. But even in this undertaking, the Egyptians act with unparalleled neglect, and do not interfere when they see whole forests of gumtrees hewn doMn, and the ground converted into dockn fields, although immense tracts of the country far better adapted for arable land remain uncultivated, by making use of which, the gum-trees would be spared. But the government does not trouble itself about such trifles, it merely scrapes together that which comes within its reach without paying the slightest attention to ulterior consequences. Of the plantation of young trees and the extirpation of such as are unprofitable, it has no idea, nature must attend to that business.

The Garrat,* whose pod is employed in tanning, * The Acacia Tr.