The manna of the wilderness provided for the children of Israel on their journey towards Canaan has no claim to be regarded as a drug, except that a drug has in modern times usurped its name. When the Israelites first saw the small round particles “like hoar frost on the ground” (Exodus, xvi, 14) they said, according to the Authorised Version, “It is manna; for they wist not what it was.” The Revised Version makes the sentence read more intelligibly by translating the Hebrew word Man-hu interrogatively thus:--“What is it? For they wist not what it was.” This Hebrew interrogation has been widely adopted as the origin of the name, but it is more probable that the Hebrew word man, a gift, is the true derivation. Ebers suggested the Egyptian word “manhu,” food, as a probable explanation. The Arabic word for the manna of Sinai is still “man.” This is the substance which scientific investigators have agreed is the manna described in Exodus. It is an exudation from the Tamarisk mannifera, a shrub which grows in the valleys of the Sinai peninsula, the manna being yielded from the young branches after the punctures of certain insects. Another Eastern manna, a Persian product from a leguminous plant, Alhagi Maurorum, and a manna yielded by an evergreen oak in Kurdistan, are still sold and used in some Eastern countries for food and medicine. But in Europe, and to some extent in the East also, Sicilian manna, the product of an ash tree, Fraxinus ornus, has displaced the old sorts since the fifteenth century. The commerce in this article and its history were investigated by Mr. Daniel Hanbury and described by him in Science Papers and in Pharmacographia.