The chief productions are wheat, wine, oil, mastic, figs, raisins, honey, wax, cotton and silk.
The apple, pear, cherry and plum thrive well in the north; the orange, lemon, citron and sugar-cane in the south; styrax and mastic in the south-west; and the wheat lands of the Sivas vilayet can hardly be surpassed.
Briicke also brought forward an experiment of great importance, in which he showed that gum mastic, precipitated from an alcoholic solution poured into a large quantity of water, scatters light of a blue tint.
He remarks that it is impossible to suppose that the particles of mastic are in the form of bubbles.
Sir William Abney has found that the above law agrees remarkably well with his observations on the transmission of light through water in which particles of mastic are suspended (Prot.
The sugar-cane flourishes, the cotton-plant ripens to perfection, date-trees are seen in the gardens, the rocks are clothed with the prickly-pear or Indian fig, the enclosures of the fields are formed by aloes and sometimes pomegranates, the liquorice-root grows wild, and the mastic, the myrtle and many varieties of oleander and cistus form the underwood of the natural forests of arbutus and evergreen oak.
17), is probably to be identified with mastic (Gen.
Many species are rich in gums and resins; the calambac, mastic, copal, cedar, &c. Many others are oleaginous, among them, peanuts, sun-flowers, the bene seed (sesame), corozo, almond and palmachristi.
Andros Island and the Abaco Islands may be specially noted for their profusion of large timber, including mahogany, mastic, lignum vitae, iron and bullet woods, and many others.
The incense sticks and pastils known all over India under the names of ud-buti (" benzoin-light") or aggar-ki-buti (" wood aloes light") are composed of benzoin, wood aloes, sandalwood, rock lichen, patchouli, rose-malloes, talispat (the leaf of Flacourtia Cataphracta of Roxburgh), mastic and sugar-candy or gum.
Cedria, or cedar resin, is a substance similar to mastic, that flows from incisions in the tree; and cedar manna is a sweet exudation from its branches.
The hard transparent resins, such as the copals, dammars, mastic and sandarach, are principally used for varnishes and cement, while the softer odoriferous oleo-resins (frankincense, turpentine, copaiba) and gum-resins containing essential oils (ammoniacum, asafoetida, gamboge, myrrh, scammony) are more largely used for therapeutic purposes and incense.
Quicklime mixed with white of egg, hardened Canada balsam, and thick copal or mastic varnish are also useful for cementing broken china, which should be warmed before their application.
Jewellers' or Armenian cement consists of isinglass with mastic and gum ammoniac dissolved in spirit.
Pistacia khinjak affords a mastic. The fruit, mixed with its resin, is used for food by the Achakzais in Southern Afghanistan.
Its figs were noted in ancient times, but wine and gum mastic have always been the most important products.
This mercantile brotherhood, formerly a privileged class, alone exploited the mastic trade; at the same time the Greeks were allowed to retain their rights of self-government and continued to exercise their industries.
The spirit called mastic or raki is largely produced.
