14. Nard and crocus, &c. Both the ancient versions and modern commentators generally agree that by the word ‏כַּרְכֹּﬦ‎, which occurs only here, the well-known saffron plant is meant. Calamus (‏קָנֶה‎, reed, also written ‏קְנֵה בשֵֹׁם‎ and ‏קָנֶה הַטּוֹב‎, sweet calamus, Exod. xxx. 23; Jer. vi. 20, κάλαμος ἀρωματικός, Calamus odoratus), was well known and highly prized among the ancients, and was imported to Palestine from India (Jer. vi. 20; xxvii. 19); it was, however, also found in the valley of Mount Lebanon, (Polyb. v. 46; Strabo, xvi. 4). It has a reed-like stem, of a tawny colour, much jointed, breaking into splinters, and its hollow reed filled with pitch, like the web of a spider. The best, which, according to Pliny (Hist. Nat. xii. 12 or 48), grows in Arabia, diffuses around a very agreeable odour, and is soft to the touch (see Rosenmüller, Bib. Bot.; Winer, Bib. Dict.; Kitto, Cyclop. Bib. Lit. s.v.) Cinnamon (‏קִנָּמוֹן‎, κίναμον, Laurus cinnamomum), indigenous to Ceylon in the East Indies, and is called by the natives Karonda-gouhah; it is now, however, also cultivated on the Malabar coast, in the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, in China and Cochin-China. The cinnamon-tree, which grows on the coast, is generally about twenty or thirty feet high, and reaches a still greater height in groves: it is adorned with numerous boughs, bearing oval and laurel-like leaves, of a scarlet colour when young, but changing to bright green, and growing to the length of from four to six inches when matured, and putting forth whitish blossoms, which ripen into fruit, resembling those of the juniper-tree in June: the fruit, though possessing neither the smell nor the taste of the cinnamon, when boiled secretes an oil, which, after cooling, becomes hard, white, and fragrant. The wood itself, which is white, inodorous, and soft as fir, is used for a variety of purposes. It is the rind which, when peeled off and dried in the sun, yields the much-valued cinnamon. (See Rosenmüller, Bibl. Bot.; Winer, Bib. Dict.; Kitto, Cyclop. Bib. Lit. s.v.) Aloe (‏אָהָל‎, Ἀλοή. John xix. 39. ἀγάλλοχον, ξυλαλοή, arbor alois), a tree which grows in India and the Moluccas, the wood of which is highly aromatic. The stem of this tree is as thick as a man’s thigh; the top is adorned with a bunch of thick and indented leaves, broad below, and narrowing gradually towards the point, and are about four feet long: its blossoms—which are red, intermixed with yellow, and double like a pink—yield the pod, producing a red and white fruit, about the size of a pea. This tree, in consequence of its singularly beautiful appearance and odoriferous wood, which is used as a perfume, is very gratifying both to the sight and smell, and is held by the Indians in sacred veneration. (See Rosenmüller, Bib. Bot.; Winer, Bib. Dict. s.v.) ‏רֹאשׁ‎, head metaph., chief, most excellent. Exod. xxx. 23; Ps. cxxxvii. 6; Ezek. xxvii. 22.