238 PRODUCTS.

whence the well-known poison is expressed, with which an obnoxious person was quietly put out of the way with a fingan of coffee in former times in Egypt, and is sometimes employed for the same purpose at the present day. This plant may be met with occasionally as a shrub in Upper Egypt ; but in Kordofan it attains the height of a tree. Many of the natives pay great attention to its cultivation, and lay the leaves into the sieve, through which they filter their merissa. These leaves contain a white milky juice, which is imparted to the beer and said to render it very narcotic. I have often warned these good people against its use ; but they excuse themselves, by saying that their fathers and mothers made use of it before them. The camel, not very particular in the selection of its food in general, never touches the escher.* As regards the superstition prevalent among the Turks, that the milk of the goats generates fever, in consequence of their having fed off the foliage of this poisonous plant, it is perfectly absurd ; for it is a well-known fact, that any kind of milk taken during the rainy season will produce fever.

Dogs, of which there are a great number, run about, as in all other mahommedan countries, without any real owners, and are yet looked upon as domestic animals. They are mostly of a yellow colour, but rather better shaped than the Egyptian dogs; like them they fted off the garbage and fallen cattle, and are not otherwise of the slightest * The oschour of Burckhardt and Browne. Tr.