Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 June 1885 — "A Gum-Arabic Diet. [ARTICLE]

"A Gum-Arabic Diet.

When a clerk in a Seventy-second street drug-store was asked for 5 cents’ worth of gum-arabic he picked up a little package from a drawer that was filled with similar packages. “You must have quite a demand for 5 cent packages,” said the customer. “Yes, we have a good many regular customers. People buy it first for soreness of the throat, or for cracked lips, and soon cultivate a taste for it that makes them buy it regularly.” “Gum-arabic fiends, eh?” •, “Not exactly. There is nothing injurious about it. Some people live on it entirely. Gum-arabic is nothing but the juice of the acaoia tree. SoOn after the rainy season, or in the middle of November, it begins to exude from the trunk and branches of the tree, which is found principally in Morocco, just like sap from a peach-tree. It hardens in little lumps and rivulets just as you see it in the package. In the middle of December the Moors begin to harvest it, picking it off by hand, packing it in leather sacks, and transporting it on the backs of bullocks and camels to Mediterranean poinfs. The , harvest lasts six wqeks, and during all this time and the subsequent fair at the ports where it is said, the Moors use it almost exclusively. It is a fact that six ounces is sufficient for a day’s rations, when no other food is eaten. \ —New York Sun.