FRANKINCENSE,[1] or OLIBANUM[2] (Gr. [Greek: libanotos], later [Greek: thyos]; Lat., _tus_ or _thus_; Heb., _lebonah_;[3] Ar., _luban_;[4] Turk., _ghyunluk_; Hind., _ganda-birosa_[5]), a gum-resin obtained from certain species of trees of the genus _Boswellia_, and natural order _Burseraceae_. The members of the genus are possessed of the following characters:--Bark often papyraceous; leaves deciduous, compound, alternate and imparipinnate, with leaflets serrate or entire; flowers in racemes or panicles, white, green, yellowish or pink, having a small persistent, 5-dentate calyx, 5 petals, 10 stamens, a sessile 3 to 5-chambered ovary, a long style, and a 3-lobed stigma; fruit trigonal or pentagonal; and seed compressed. Sir George Birdwood (_Trans. Lin. Soc._ xxvii., 1871) distinguishes five species of _Boswellia_: (A) _B. thurifera_, Colebr. (_B. glabra_ and _B. serrata_, Roxb.), indigenous to the mountainous tracts of central India and the Coromandel coast, and _B. papyrifera_ (_Ploesslea floribunda_, Endl.) of Abyssinia, which, though both thuriferous, are not known to yield any of the olibanum of commerce; and (B) _B. Frereana_ (see ELEMI, vol. x. p. 259), _B. Bhua-Dajiana_, and _B. Carterii_, the "Yegaar," "Mohr Add," and "Mohr Madow" of the Somali country, in East Africa, the last species including a variety, the "Maghrayt d'Sheehaz" of Hadramaut, Arabia, all of which are sources of true frankincense or olibanum. The trees on the Somali coast are described by Captain G. B. Kempthorne as growing, without soil, out of polished marble rocks, to which they are attached by a thick oval mass of substance resembling a mixture of lime and mortar: the purer the marble the finer appears to be the growth of the tree. The young trees, he states, furnish the most valuable gum, the older yielding merely a clear glutinous fluid resembling copal varnish.[6] To obtain the frankincense a deep incision is made in the trunk of the tree, and below it a narrow strip of bark 5 in. in length is peeled off. When the milk-like juice ("spuma pinguis," Pliny) which exudes has hardened by exposure to the atmosphere, the incision is deepened. In about three months the resin has attained the required degree of consistency. The season for gathering lasts from May until the first rains in September. The large clear globules are scraped off into baskets, and the inferior quality that has run down the tree is collected separately. The coast of south Arabia is yearly visited by parties of Somalis, who pay the Arabs for the privilege of collecting frankincense.[7] In the interior of the country about the plain of Dhofar,[8] during the south-west monsoon, frankincense and other gums are gathered by the Beni Gurrah Bedouins, and might be obtained by them in much larger quantities; their lawlessness, however, and the lack of a safe place of exchange or sale are obstacles to the development of trade. (See C. Y. Ward, _The Gulf of Aden Pilot_, p. 117, 1863.) Much as