Lad'anum

Lad'anum (Arab. lādān ; Gr. lēdanon), a curious, delicately-scented, resinous gum which exudes from certain kinds of Cistus, chiefly C. creticus, C. ledon, and C. laurifolius, growing in Crete, Cyprus, and parts of Asia Minor. C. ladaniiferus, strange to say, does not produce the gum. Lad'anum, under the name of Labdanum, is alluded to by Browning in Paracelsus ; and there are interesting articles under Ladanum and Lede in the French Encyclopédie, ix. 172 and 336, in which the gum is said to be collected on fringes of leather attached to long poles, and drawn over the shrubs in the heat of the day. In Cyprus at the present time the gum is actually collected from the beards of the goats that browse among the bushes, a system mentioned by Herodotus, iii. 112. At one time lad'anum was used in medicine and as a perfume ; it is now, in the form of small black balls, a costly toy fingered by soft-handed idlers in the Levant.