WHAT IS MANNA?

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 9 August 1928, Page 3

WHAT IS MANNA?

THE PROBLEM SOLVED

. The Hebrew University at Jerusalem lias decided to estaolisn a zoological laboratory on Mount ocopus under the direction of Dr. F. S. bodenheimer, iOrmeny duel entondogist of the Agricultural Experimental Station of tne Zionist Organisation. Dr. Bodenheimer caused much discussion m scientiric envies last year by Ins announcement that mainia, tne. miraculous food winch rained from heaven on the Jews in their forty years’ wandering m Lite desert, is not, as was commonly oeiimei, an exudation of the tamarisK tree, but is the secretion of a scale insect, a parasite of that tree.

Details of ins discovery were given in a paper which Dr. jbodenheiiner read last autumn before tlie Entomological Congress in Budapest. The expedition organised by tlie Hebrew University and headed by Dr. Bodenhenner and his assistant, Dr. Oscar Theodor, went to the desert ox Sinai for tlie purpose of establishing scientifically the truth about this Biblical phenomenon, l'or lirty years it had been presumed but not proved that manna is a honey-like liquid which exudes from punctures made by an insect in the stems and hardens into the crystalline substance described by the Israelites as “a small round thing, as small as the hoar Host on the ground.’-' The name “manna” was supposed to nave arisen from the question which the Israelites who saw it and “wist not what it was” asted, “Man hu: (“What is it?”)— “Aijcl the houses or Israel called the name thereof manna, and it was like a coriander seed, white, and the taste was like wafers made with honey.” To this day manna is consumed by the roaming Bedouin and sold to pilgrims as “celestial manna. The two scientists did not know whether their problem was one ol plant physiology or entomological resear, h. They provided themselves wui equipment that would help them to sol e it in either case. As a result ot his' research Dr. Bodenhenner con- , iiued the world that manna is not a secretion of the tamarisk, but of the scale insects known to scientists as naiococeus and trebutina. The secretion ranging in size from a pm-head to a pea, drops in the form of syrup, falls to the ground and is crystallised, iii yjfpearanee and taste it fits exactly the Biblical description, “like waters made with honey.”