li»*iii>lwi|i*!i>iM>iiii«wwwwww'"i)iwi'''w'^'i'^ Scripture ^\ v\sV lATURAi £90 23B=lat6s of Mbit ItnotoleUge. X. SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY. I. THE TREES AND PLANTS MENTIONED IN THE BIBLE. WILLIAM H. GROSER, B.Sc. (LoND.) Au(/ior of 'Joshua and his Successors,' eu. THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY, 56 Paternoster Row, and 65 St. Paul's Churchyard. 1888. * Syria is well worthy to be the home of civilization, possessing as she does lands fertile even under complete abandonment; fields producing spontaneously cereals for food and silks and cottons for clothing ; timber of every description, and of the best quality, from the cedar to the oak, from the plane to the pine, and which may be had for the felling; while sycomores of enormous size spread their branches wide enough to cover a whole caravan with their grateful shade. . . Whatever in the vegetable kingdom is useful or beautiful is here found in the natural unforced produce of the soil, spread out in rich and prodigal abundance.' — Farley, Two Years in Syria. \At CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Sketch of the Vegetation of Palestine and the neighbouring countries .... Bay Tree Box Chesnut Cypress PAGE 1-27 CHAPTER 11. , Timber and Forest Trees and Shrubs . . . . 28 Algum (or Almug) Trees . . -37 Ash . . . ... -38 39 40 Cedar ... . . . . 41 .6153 Ebony .... . . 54 Fir, Pine .... 55 Gopher Wood . 59 Heath. ... 60 Juniper . . . 6i Mulberry .... 63 Myrtle . . . . . . 64 Oak, Teil Tree, Terebinth ... 66 Oil Tree ... ... . . 74 as CONTENTS. PAGE Poplar 75 Shittah Tree, Shittim Wood 76 Thyine Wood , . 78 Willow 79 CHAPTER III. Fruit Trees and Shrubs Almond 87 Apple . . , 89 Date Palm . . 93 Fig Tree ... 100 Husks . . 107 Nuts . 108 Olive, Olive Oil . . . . . . .no Pomegranate .... .... ii8 Sycamine, Sycomore 121 Vine . . 124 CHAPTER IV. Grain and Vegetables .... 134137 140 Barley Beans, Pulse Cucumbers, Gourd, Melons, Wild Vine . . .143 Garlick, Leeks, Onions i .g Lentiles ,,-151 Millet _ j CONTENTS. vii PAGE ' RiE,' Wheat ij^ Reed, 'Paper Reeds,' Rush, Bulrush, 'Flag' . .157 'Tares' .... 162 CHAPTER v. Herbs and Flowers 167 Anise, Mint, Rue ... .... 171 Bramble .... 172 Cockle, Hemlock ... .... 173 Coriander, Cummin, Fitches 174 Flax (Linen, Fine Linen) 176 Hyssop 1^9 Lily, Rose . 182 Mallows . . i8» Mandrakes 188 Mustard 190 Nettle . . 192 Thistle .... Wormwood i 193 94 CHAPTER VI. Perfumes and Medicines igg Aloes . . . _ 203 Balm ... 204 Bdellium 205 Vlll CONTENTS. Calamus, ' Sweet Cane ' . Cassia, Cinnamon Camphire .... Frankincense Galbanum, Onycha, Stacte Myrrh .... Nard, Spikenard Saffron .... PAGE 206207 209 210213214 217 218 CHAPTER VII. Emblematic use of Plants in Scripture 221—230 List of Scripture References 231-235 CHAPTER I. SKETCH OF THE VEGETATION OF PALESTINE AND THE NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. The interest surrounding that limited portion of Western Asia which modern writers agree to call by its classical name of PALESTINE, is wholly unparalleled both in nature and degree. The love of the Swiss for their native mountains, or the Scotsman's attachment to the ' land of brown heath and shaggy wood,' affords but a faint type of that glowing and reverent affection with which Christians of every race and nation have constantly regarded their more than Fatherland — the birthplace of their faith and hope. The devotion which once drew pilgrims to its venerable metropolis, — to them the geo graphical centre of the globe, — established hermits amidst its rocky solitudes, and inspired the grand but reckless fanaticism of Crusaders, finds its modern counterpart in a growing and intelligent interest in all that concerns the Holy Land, its history and topography, its past and present inhabitants, and its vegetable and animal pro ductions. Science has taken the place of superstition ; and without the loss of true reverence, sacred sites, long encircled with the delusive halo of legend and romance, are measured and mapped out by the careful hand of the surveyor. To gain and to preserve a faithful transcript of the material proportions and natural peculiarities of the country ; to trace the course of its once-frequented B 3 SKETCH OF THE VEGETATION OF PALESTINE highways, explore its silent wastes, and disinter from shapeless mounds the scanty and broken relics of former industry and civilization ; to enumerate and identify the trees and shrubs which still clothe the hill-sides, the flowers which emblazon the vernal soil, the cattle yet roaming on the upland pastures, and the birds which ' sing,' as of old, ' among the branches ' ; — all this and much more it has been reserved for our own age to attempt, and in large measure to accomplish, in Israel's ancient heritage: a crusade well worthy of the intelligence, and not less worthy of the piety, of the nineteenth century. Every student of Holy Scripture will naturally seek to form mental conceptions of the scenes amidst which its several portions were written, and the chief events which it records were enacted ; from which, also, its varied and impressive imagery was derived. And to do this with even approximate accuracy demands some acquaintance with the general features of Oriental vegetation. It is true that what Von Humboldt aptly termed the ' physiognomy ' of any country is based primarily on its geological structure, the character and arrangement of its rock-masses ; but the clothing of its stony skeleton, its numberless modifications of external form and colour, are due chiefly to its vegetable life. More than skies or clouds, more than valleys or hills, more than sentient creatures of high or low degree, the trees, shrubs, and flowers of a land give character to its scenery ; impressing the mind by their grandeur, or charming it by their beauty. In a previous volume of the present series^ the 1 Egyft and Syria ; their Physical Features in relation to Bible History. By Sir J. W. Dawson (R.T. S., new and revised edition, 1887). AND THE NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. 3 geological peculiarities of Palestine and the countries which border it have been ably and adequately described. The reader will thus have been made acquainted with those remarkable diversities of elevation by which a territory so small as that of the Hebrews should yet include within itself a climate so strangely varied. If Palestine had been a plain, its climate would have been comprised in the sub-tropical zone extending from lat. 334° to 34° ; but, owing to the inequalities of its surface, no less than five out of the eight zones recognized by geographers are represented within its limited area. On the snow-capped peaks of Lebanon the climate approaches an Arctic severity, while the lower parts of the Ghor, or Jordan valley, experience a tropical heat. Between these extremes of temperature we have the climates of the western coast, the inland plains and lower hills, the higher uplands, and the loftier table-lands beyond Jordan. Out of this strangely-varied climate springs a corre sponding complexity in the animal and vegetable life of the country; and the English traveller is struck with the sight of familiar forms, mingled with exotics which remind him how far he has wandered from the temperate fauna and flora of Northern Europe. Tropical bats, Indian owls, and Ethiopian sun-birds are to be found within the borders of the Holy Land, no less than the robins and skylarks, finches and wrens of colder latitudes. The paper-reeds of Egypt and the palms and acacias of the desert are represented, equally with the oaks, willows, and junipers of Europe. The general aspects of the vegetation of Palestine may be briefly summed up as follows : — The plants B % 4 SlCETCH of- THE VEGETATION OF PALESTINE common to the plain of the coast and the southern high lands are for the most part identical with those found in the other countries bordering the Mediterranean east of the Straits of Gibraltar. Here grow the Aleppo pine, the myrtle and ilex, the grey olive and the green arbutus, the carob or locust tree, the orange and citron ; the vine, the fig-tree, and the pomegranate. The bay and the oleaster flourish on the hills, and the streams are over hung by the roseate blossoms of the oleander. The rest of the table-lands which constitute the greater part of Palestine, both east and west of the Jordan, include a flora of a more widely diffused character, comprising plants of Central Europe and Western Asia, with not a few species growing in our own island. Among them may be mentioned pines and junipers, the terebinth, the almond, apricot and peach, the hawthorn and mountain ash, the ivy and honeysuckle, the walnut and mulberry ; oaks, poplars, and willows ; the majestic cedars of Lebanon, the melancholy cypress, and the plane-tree with its wide-spreading shade. The vegetation of the Jordan Valley, on the other hand, is of a type most closely allied to that of Northern Africa, with a proportion of Indian, as well as of European, species. Here the date-palm once flourished, though only a few stragglers now remain ; here grow the acacia and the retem of the desert (the ' shittim ' and 'juniper' of Scripture), and many less-known plants, represented in Africa but not on the European continent. In point of climatal conditions, Palestine is most favourably situated. ' The inhabitants,' says Meyen, 'rejoice in the happiest clime. The warmth of the summer enables tropical plants to grow on the plains ; thus, the date-palm and the fig (the edible species and AND THE NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. 5 the sycomore-fig) found a home in Southern Syria, in sheltered spots. The strip of coast tended to diminish the extremes of temperature, and thus palms grew, and still grow, in the maritime plain. Palestine was also able to boast a large number of more northern plants, belonging strictly to the warmer temperate zone, on the edge of which Northern Palestine is situated. Hence it gained many beautiful evergreen trees and shrubs, myrtles, laurels, cistuses, and other important plants of Southern Europe, not to speak of the vine and pome granate^.' Humboldt, in his Aspects of Nature, enumer ates sixteen^ tribes of plants, whose forms determine natural scenery — so far, of course, as its botanical element is concerned. Of these, fully half are represented in Palestine, viz. the palms, acacias, laurels, myrtles, pines, willows, mallows, and lilies. From a country thus rich in diversities of climate, elevation, and natural productions, the sacred writers were led to draw their supplies of imagery in the composition of a world-wide volume. This fact has been often dwelt upon ; but it has not so frequently been remarked that the resources of the Greek and Latin poets were not dissimilar in kind, though inferior in variety, so far as related to the vegetable forms by which they were surrounded. Hence there is considerable resemblance between the ' botany of the Classics ' and the 'botany of the Bible^.' A country of woods and forests, in the sense in which that might have been affirmed of Great Britain ten centuries ago, Palestine is not now, nor does it seem to have been such within ' Geography of Plants. ^ Other writers have increased the number to twenty two. * See Daubeny's Essay on the Trees and Shrubs of the Aiicients (1865), 6 SKETCH OF THE VEGETATION OF PALESTINE the historic period. Its hill-tops were covered with a soil too thin to encourage the growth of large timber-trees. We thus find frequent reference in Scripture to single trees (chiefly in the south) as familiar landmarks, which could hardly occur in a woodland district. Still, there are woods and forests in Western Palestine, and more extensive ones on the table-lands east of the Jordan ; and there is every reason for concluding that there was a much larger area so occupied in former days than now. ' As soon,' remarks Professor Schouw, ' as a race rises to agriculture, it becomes hostile to the forests. The trees' are in the way of the spade and plough, and the wood gives less booty than the field, the garden, or the vine yard. The forest, therefore, falls beneath the axe. . . . And thus, under like circumstances, the country in which civilization is oldest possesses the fewest woods. Hence forests are more sparingly met with in the countries of the Mediterranean than northward of the Alps.' It seems probable, therefore, that the clearing process had begun in Palestine long before the Hebrews settled there, and that it has continued to a varying extent since their dispersion. Mr. Consul Finn^ has wisely pointed out the need of caution in drawing general conclusions respecting even the present amount of woodland in Western Palestine, seeing that very much is inaccessible to travellers who pursue only the normal routes in visiting the country. He also comments on the wholesale destruction of growing timber in the neighbourhood of towns and villages for the purposes of fuel, which goes on with characteristic disregard of consequences by the peasantry, and with equally/characteristic indifference ^ Byeways in Palestine, AND THE NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. 7 on the part of the government. There is evidence that the now comparatively bare hills of Judah and Benjamin were diversified by oak-woods at quite a recent period. Nor must the effects on vegetation of the successive and devastating invasions to which Palestine has been subjected be overlooked in our estimate. The proud boast of the Assyrian monarch that the cedars and fir-trees of Lebanon and the woods of Carmel should fall before the axes of his soldiery is but a sample of the relentless destructiveness of ancient pagan warfare. The Mosaic law mercifully prohibited the felling of any fruit-bearing tree even in an enemy's territory ; but both the Egyptians and the Assyrians cut down fruit and timber-trees indiscriminately, as the monumental inscriptions and bas-reliefs amply testify. From Sen nacherib to Titus, the enemies of Israel smote the choicest vegetation of the land ; and we are reminded by the pathetic words of the latest Jewish historian, how, in the neighbourhood of the doomed city, the trees were everywhere felled for the military engines of the besiegers, and how wood failed to supply crosses in sufficient abundance on which the wretched inhabitants might be nailed in hideous mockery by the Roman legionaries^. In the far north, two extensive forest- regions remain ; that known as the Belad Beshirah in Upper Galilee, between the Jordan and the warm Phoenician plain ; and, south of the former, a district extending from near Cassarea to the plain of Buttauf above Acre. This, the ingens sylva of Roman writers, adjoins the Carmel ridge, and their united thickets of oak constitute the 'forest of Carmel' just mentioned. 1 See Deut. xx. 19, 20; Isaiah ix. 10; xiv. 8; xxxvii. 24; Jer. xxii. 7; Josephus, Wars, lib. v. c. iii. § 2 ; c. xi. § : ; lib. vi. i,. i. § i. 8 SKETCH OF THE VEGETATION OF PALESTINE The aspect of the two ranges of Libanus and Anti- Libanus is at first bare and rugged, as their geological structure would lead us to anticipate ; but beneath these mighty crags of reddish yellow, glowing beneath a sky of intensest blue, lies an oasis of almost unequalled beauty and fruitfulness. Nestling in these secure retreats — the 'rocks 'of their 'strength' — dwell Druse and Maronite, a hardy and industrious race, turning to account the splendid natural advantages of their mountain home, and rendering it, in the words of Lamartine, ' an Eden restored.' The slopes are terraced for grain and a variety of fruit-trees ; villages lie embosomed in ruddy orchards and groves of mulberry, — the characteristic tree of Lebanon. Oranges, peaches, apricots, plums, cherries and almonds, thrive at different elevations, ac cording to their several ranges of temperature. Here, as almost everywhere else in Palestine, the vine and pomegranate yield their rich produce. In the warmer and more sheltered spots the palm and the olive, the fig and the walnut, find a congenial home ; green oaks abound higher up the mountain side, and higher still, the pine, cypress, and juniper crown the successive zones of vegetation with their sombre foliage. On Lebanon, such Northern species as the mountain ash, the box, and the berberry have found a refuge; while humbler plants, like the wild rose, geranium, and honeysuckle, impart an almost English aspect to the scene. And beside the many ' streams from Lebanon,' willows and poplars, the Oriental plane, and the crimson oleander, with a mass of lowher vegetation, flourish as in Bible days. In the lofty table-lands beyond Jordan — the southward extension of Anti-Libanus — pine forests clothe the summits of the highest hills ; lower down, woods of AND THE NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. 9 evergreen-oak adorn the park-like scenery of ancient Gilead and Bashan ; and, mingled with them, the rich foliage of the myrtle, the arbutus, and the carob or locust-tree, varied with the pink and white blossoms of the retem bush. ' The traveller who only knows Palestine to the west of the Jordan,' says Mr. Laurence Oliphant, ' can form no idea of the luxuriance of the hill-sides of Gilead, doubly enjoyable by the contrast which they present to the rocky, barren slopes of Galilee and Judea. Here we crossed sparkling rivulets, where the sunlight glinted through the foliage . . . and brakes and glades, seldom disturbed by the foot of man. In places the forest opened, and the scenery resembled that of an English park, the large trees standing singly on the long grass ; while at others, where possibly in old days there had been well-cultivated farms, the trees gave way altogether to luxuriant herbage, encircling it as though it were a lake of grass into which their long branches drooped^,' The country further to the south, formerly known as the territories of Ammon and Moab, is more sparsely wooded, the terebinth being the predominant tree ; but it is equally rich in pastures, as Scripture would lead us to suppose. In Galilee, besides the oak woods already mentioned, a dense undergrowth of mastic, hawthorn, and spurge- laurel overspreads the hills ; there and elsewhere re placing the ancient woods. Thistles and thorny plants abound, with flowers of every hue in the early spring time. The terebinth is not uncommon, and the vine is extensively cultivated, as in the Lebanon district further to the north. ' 'The Land of Gilead. lO SKETCH OF THE VEGETATION OF PALESTINE In the plain of the Buttauf in Lower Galilee, corn, cotton, and almost every species of vegetable grow luxuriantly. Nazareth, a few miles distant, nestling amidst a circlet of some fifteen hills, 'like a rose set round with leaves,' has still its palms and cypresses, its fig-trees and gardens. Crossing the memorable plain of Esdraelon, the 'battle-field of Palestine' and one of its richest fields of cultivation, we pass into the fertile and well-watered district of Samaria. Captain Conder thus graphically describes the Vale of Shechem, the most luxuriant in the whole land : — ' Long rivulets, fed by no less than eighty springs (according to the natives), run down the hill-slopes and murmur in the deep ravines ; gardens surround the city walls ; figs, walnuts, mulberries, oranges, lemons, olives, pomegranates, vines, plums, and every species of vegetable grow in abundance, and the green foliage and sparkling streams refresh the eye. But as at Damascus, the oasis is set in a desert, and the stony barren mountains contrast strongly with the green orchards below ^.' The hills of Samaria appear to be most favourable for the growth of the olive, and indeed this most characteristic tree of modern Palestine abounds both on the higher and lower grounds, overspreading the former and growing amidst the gardens planted in the valleys. Mr. Buckingham remarks that, ' while in Judea the hills are mostly as bare as the imagination could paint them, and a few of the narrow valleys only are fertile; in Samaria, the very summits of the eminences are as well clothed as the sides of them. These, with the luxuriant valleys which they enclose, present scenes ' Tent-ivork in Palestine. AND THE NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. II of unbroken verdure in almost every point of view, which are delightfully varied by the picturesque forms of the hills and vales themselves, enriched by the occasional sight of wood and water, in clusters of olive and other trees, and rills and torrents running among them.' The difference between these two adjacent districts has been often commented on, not always without exaggeration. But the tame, bare, and desolate aspect of so much of the southern highlands of Palestine, including the environs of Jerusalem, is mainly due to the two causes already adverted to : the destruction of timber — resulting here, as in some parts of France and Italy, in the sweeping away of a once productive soil ; and the neglect of the ancient terrace-cultivation. Speaking of the neighbourhood of Bethlehem, Canon Tristram remarks, that ' the hill-sides are clad with dwarf oak, bay, lentisk, and broom.' The sides of the glen where once were the famed Gardens of Solomon, are ' steep, rocky, and torn.' Yet Bethlehem, tenanted by a Christian population, has its oliveyards and vineyards as of old, and the portion of the Gardens now cultivated sends abundance of peaches, apricots, figs, almonds, and pomegranates to the markets of Jerusalem. A like observation applies to the district still further south. A walk up the Vale of Eshcol, once renowned for its vines, ' revealed to us,' says the writer just quoted, 'what Judah was everywhere else in the days of its prosperity. Bare and stony as are the hill-sides, not an inch of space is lost. Terraces, where the ground is not too rocky, support the soil ; ancient vineyards cling to the lower slopes ; olive, mulberry, almond, fig, and 13 SJCETCH OF THE VEGETATION OF PALESTINE pomegranate trees fill every available cranny to the very crest ; while the bottom of the valley is carefully tilled for cress, carrots, and cauliflowers, which will soon give place to melons and cucumbers. That catacomb of perished cities, the " hill country of Judah," is all explained by a walk up the Vale of Eshcol ^.' The aspects of these Judean hills, as their geological structure would suggest, is' not unlike that of our chalk downs, with their rounded summits and scant herbage ; but, like them, not destitute of timber in favourable spots. The route southward from Hebron passes over plains of arable land lying between hills clothed with evergreen- oak and arbutus, with pine-trees on the eminences. Here, as elsewhere round the capital, the destruction of trees and shrubs for charcoal-making goes on at an increasing rate. The district of the Negeb or ' South Country,' into which the hills of Judah gradually melt, is of similar external character. Low hills and rolling downs, carpeted with grass and adorned in early spring with countless flowers, meet the eye of the traveller who ascends into the 'South' from the desert beyond; or, like Abram, 'goes down' from Hebron or Mamre on his way to Egypt. Scarcely any trees are to be found here, except an occasional tamarisk. Springs are infrequent; but tribes of Bedouin nomads find abundant pasturage for their flocks in the territories of the ancient Amalekites. These natural terraces formed the southern border of Israel's inheritance. The Valley of the Jordan possesses, as already inti mated, a flora of its own. The swift-flowing river burrows more and more deeply into its rocky bed ' TheLand of Israel. u ^(t i AND THE NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. 15 throughout its winding course of nearly two hundred miles, from the foot of Hermon to the Dead Sea. The vegetation of the upper part, above the Lake of Galilee, affords a strange mixture of Northern and Southern forms. ' Luxuriant willows,' says Mr. Lowne, ' fringe the stream, whilst dense thickets of tamarisk, buckthorn. Spina Christi thorn, and plane-trees shut out the view for miles, and shelter a tangle of wild roses, brambles, and vines.' Mr. John Macgregor, whose canoe was probably the first boat that ever navigated the upper part of the river, speaks of the eastern source, near Banias, as being in a grassy and well-wooded region. The spring is surrounded by a thorny and impenetrable thicket, below which the water bursts forth under ' a mass of fig-trees, reeds, and strongest creepers.' He adds, ' A splendid terebinth and a not less splendid oak droop over the infant stream ^.' The northern portion of Lake Huleh— the Biblical ' Waters of Merom ' — is covered by an immense tract of floating thickets of papyrus ; and white and yellow water- lilies adorn the more open portions. Thence the river rushes down, 'between rocks thick-set with oleanders.' As it emerges and prepares to enter the Galilean Lake it spreads into a sort of grassy delta, fertile and dotted with trees and bushes. A few palm-trees grow near the lake at this end, and others occur at different points, not far from the shores, on both sides. Josephus alludes to these, and to the fact that walnuts, figs, and olives flourish in this delightful district ^ Oleanders fringe the sandy beach at Gennesareth, and the grass is 1 Rob Roy on the Jordan. ' Wars, lib. iii. c. x. § 8. l6 SKETCH OF THE VEGETATION OF PALESTINE gay with flowers of every hue, in their brief bright spring time. On quitting the Sea of Galilee the downward stream pursues its winding course through a valley of vary ing breadth. This valley, the Ghor ('hollow') of the Arabs, is the Arabah of the Old Testament, usually rendered 'plain,' but left untranslated in Josh, xviii. i8, &c. It presents in some parts two, in others three, levels or terraces on either side of the river. The course of the Jordan is everywhere marked by a thick jungle of reeds, tamarisks, and oleanders, with islands, here and there, similarly overgrown. Circles of verdure indicate the presence of springs or the debouching of tributary streams from wild and wooded gorges into the main current. Canon Tristram thus describes the wind ing course of the river between its terraces, as seen from the heights above : — ' First, gradually declining from the western hills, and formed principally of their debris, is the upper terrace, on which stand the two great oases of Ain Duk and Ain Sultan, commencing at a height of 750 feet above the level of the Dead Sea, and sinking at Er Riha [near the site of Jericho] to 500 feet. Hence a somewhat steep slope descends nearly aoo feet to the second plateau. This is now barren, but merely so from neglect, except in the portion nearest the lake, where the soil is impregnated with salt, and covered with efflor escence of sulphur. Thirdly, comes the extent of ground about ICO feet lower still, occasionally overflowed by the river ; and, lastly, fringing the stream and very frequently under water, the narrow depressed belt, which is a mere tangle of trees and cane, often only a few yards in width.' Here the date-palm formerly attained its greatest luxuriance. The celebrated palm-grove which gave to AND THE NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. 17 Jericho its ancient title (Deut. xxxiv. 3) is said to have been eight miles in length by three miles broad. Of the district Josephus wrote : ' There are in it many sorts of palm-trees, . . . different from each other in taste and name ; the better sort of them, when pressed, yield an excellent kind of honey .... The country withal produces honey from bees ; it also bears that balsam which is the most precious of all the fruits of that place ; cypress-trees also, and those ^ that bear myrobalanum .... And indeed, if we speak of these other fruits, it will not be easy to light on any climate on the habitable earth that can well be com pared with it.' With the exception of a few specimens growing near the houses of modern Jericho, no representatives of the palm-forest remain in the neighbourhood. Yet their relics are not difficult to discover in the vast assemblage of tree-trunks which lie heaped at the northern extremity of the Dead Sea, and the half-fossilized palm-leaves to •be found in recently-formed limestone at Ain Jidy, the ancient Engedi. Of the valleys which open towards the Jordan on its western side, two have perennial streams, the Jalud and the Farah. The latter runs rapidly through a delightful vale, and is fringed with reeds, oleanders, and aromatic herbs. On the eastern side of the Ghor are three im portant rivers, the Yarmuk, the Zerka or Jabbok, and the Modjib or Arnon. There is also the Zerka M'ain, a brook east of the Dead Sea. The gorges through which these streams descend are clothed with the most luxuriant vegetation. Enormous oleanders with their crimson blossoms, and the beautiful white retem, with ' The zakkum tree of the Arabs, or False Balm of Gilead (^Balanites yEgyftiaca). Wars, lib. iv. c. viii. § 3. C l8 SKETCH OF THE VEGETATION OF PALESTINE terebinths, oaks, and arbutus, make up some of the most picturesque scenery in the land of Israel ; while here and there palm-trees rear their graceful crests, and cornfields spread out on the plain below. One other district claims a brief notice. The Maritime Plain and adjacent hills of the Shephelah, or ' low country,' lying between the Mediterranean and the highlands of Western Palestine, enjoy a climate eminently favourable to vegetation. Warm and sheltered, the palm and tamarisk of the Desert and the Arabah flourish abundantly, with the fig and terebinth, and of course the ubiquitous olive, vine, and pomegranate ; oaks, evergreen and deciduous, grow on the slopes, pines on the hill-tops, and abundance of small shrubs and flowers beneath. Waving fields of wheat and barley remind us of the days when Philistia was the granary of Canaan ; and the sycomore-fig, too tender for the highlands above, grows abundantly in the 'vale,' as of old, and along the coast. The sites of human settle ments, ancient and modern, — Gaza, Jaffa, Ramleh, as well as Acre and Caiffa further north, — are embosomed in orchards and gardens ; and the streams which run westward to the Mediterranean are bordered with cane- brakes and adorned with oleanders and willows ; in some cases, also, with the slender paper-reeds of Egypt. Thus, wherever the observant traveller turns his steps within the limits of Israel's former inheritance, he finds a climate and a soil of striking and almost unequalled capabilities, regarded in relation to its very limited area. Yet it is not less obvious that for the full realization of those capabilities, there is needed the aid of constant and persevering industry on the part of its inhabitants. And that this was the case from the earliest times seems AND THE NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. 19 evident from such descriptions as that in Deut. viii. 7-9, where the productions enumerated are those which derive their value from cultivation. It was wisely and beneficently ordained that the natural resources of Palestine should require the healthful exercise of human effort for their full development; and this is still observable in its present degenerate condition, both by what has been lost and by what still remains of scenery and vegetation. A picture of Western Palestine would lose its most pleasing features if the cultivated trees and shrubs were absent. Throughout the country, from Lebanon to Southern Judea, the olive, the fig, the vine, and the pomegranate, are cultivated in favourable situations, as circumstances permit ; though in greatly diminished numbers as compared with Biblical times, when the bare limestone hills, now dotted only with olives almost as grey as themselves, were tapestried with vines rising in terraced festoons, one above another, so abundant and so fruitful as to be a favourite type of the Israelite nation^. The pistachia tree and the black and white mulberry are also generally cultivated, and sufficient crops of wheat and barley are still raised to form part of the exports of the country. In what are our winter months, the meadows and pastures are ablaze with flowers of every hue, — ranunculuses, aromatic herbs, and bulbous plants being conspicuous, — but their glory is short-lived ; as the solar heat increases, ' the ' grass withereth, the flower fadeth,' and the spring blossoms are ' cast into the oven,' for fuel, as of old. Wherever warmth, sheltered position, and moisture ' Psalm Ixxx. 8. Cruden gives about forty references to the olive and the fig respectively; but more than three times as many to the vine. C 3 ao SKETCH OF THE VEGETATION OF PALESTINE prevail, the fertility of the soil speedily becomes apparent. These conditions are attained in the plains which traverse the highlands or border the coast, and in the innumerable valleys which wind among the hills. Besides the twelve important streams which run into the Mediterranean and the Jordan valley respectively, the uplands are intersected by wadys, or torrent-beds, which in the rainy seasons form channels for countless brooks. The junction of the limestone strata with the superjacent chalk also gives rise to numerous springs, from which the names of so many Scripture localities derive their prefix Ain or En. And even where these superficial supplies are wanting, the well and the cistern formerly yielded all that was required, except in seasons of drought ; and might easily be made to do so again. Thus, dowered by nature and enriched by human industry, Palestine was emphatically ' a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills ; ' a land whose inhabitants could ' eat bread without scarceness,' and ' not lack anything in it.' It was ' a pleasant portion ' and ' a delightsome land' (Deut. viii. 7-9; Jer.xii.io; Mai. iii. 12). But centuries of misrule and neglect have combined with natural agencies to make desolate this once favoured heritage. The winter rains have swept the thin soil from the hill-sides, the sword of the conqueror and the axe of the peasant have demolished both forest and fruit-tree; many a spring has thus run dry, and many a stream now feeds '^nly a pestilential marsh ; the soil ' mourneth and languisheth,' and the ancient prediction is fulfilled by the operation of natural but unerring laws. ' Lebanon is ashamed and hewn down ; Sharon is like a wilderness ; AND THE NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. 21 and Bashan and Carmel shake off their fruits ' (Isaiah xxxiii. 9). Nor with less complete and literal accuracy does the modern botanist confirm the prophetic denunciation — 'Upon the land of My people shall come up thorns and briers ; yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city ; ' ' The thorn and the thistle shall come up on their altars ' (Isaiah xxxii. 13 ; Hosea x. 8). With the exception of North-western Arabia and the valley of the Nile, the vegetable productions of the countries surrounding Palestine hold but a slight relationship with 'the Botany of the Bible.' The flora of Northern Syria does not differ materially from that of Palestine. The wide plains which stretch far away beyond the table-lands east of Jordan are seldom referred to by the sacred writers, while the plants of the countries still further east, like those of the scenes of apostolic travel, supply but a few references, either in the Old or New Testament. The vegetation of the peninsula of Sinai, however, and that of Egypt, cannot fail to be of interest to Bible readers. The phrase 'general vegetation' is somewhat of a misnomer as applied to the former territory ; the presence of plants which give character to a landscape being the exception, and not the rule. The air, though pure and exhilarating, is extremely dry ; and the rainfall being very limited, springs and streams are rare, except in certain localities, such as the granite district round Mount Sinai. But wherever moisture is found, oases occur green with pastures, and glens and wadies, where the maidenhair-fern overhangs the sheltered pools with its fairy fronds, and lavender, mint, and thyme exhale 22 SKETCH OF THE VEGETATION OF PALESTINE their fragrance amidst the mosses and sedges by the water-side. The characteristic trees of the peninsula are the date- palm, the acacia, and the tamarisk. Beside these there are the wild fig and wild palm, a willow, the carob or locust-tree, and the retem or white broom ; beside the fruit-trees common in Palestine, but these, for the most part, have probably been introduced into the peninsula by human agency. Of the above, the acacia and tamarisk are the most frequent. Palms abound in the oases ; the caper and other small plants spring here and there out of rock crevices ; but neither trees, shrubs, nor flowers are sufficiently numerous to affect the general features of this ' dry and thirsty land.' The hardy camel contrives to extract satisfaction and nourishment from the dryest and most prickly growths of the wilderness ; but the zoology and botany of this territory are alike of the most limited character. ' In lighting upon a tree or a well you seem to be meeting with a friend. It is an event which des((,T j record.' Dr. Bonar (just quoted) describes, in a few forcible sentences, the essential diversity of the aspects of vegetation in Sinai and Palestine. Speaking of the Wady Feiran (generally, but as he thinks incorrectly, identified with Rephidim), the Doctor remarks : ' The whole valley is well watered, as its verdure shows ; not the verdure of grass, as with us (you do not see that in the desert, save round a well or a rill), scantily either in Egypt or Palestine, nor the verdure of forest trees ; . . . but the verdure of palms and tamarisks, such vegetation as is sufficient to feed the Arab and his camel.' He adds : ' I did not see anything in the desert that I could call even C i 1 ^ AND THE NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. 25 a thin clothing of vegetation ; even where the shrubs abound in the wadys there is no show of what we should call " green." Vegetation is so dull in its hue that it does not look like verdure ^.' The reader will, however, have observed that the scanty flora of the desert, so far as it extends, corresponds in a considerable degree with that of the Lower Jordan valley, and particularly of the district adjoining the Dead Sea ^ The indigenous flora of Egypt, the Egypt of the Bible, differs but little from that of the Sinaitic peninsula and the Lower Ghor. The cultivated plants, however, were very numerous, if we may judge from the list given by Pliny, illustrating the high civilization which so long prevailed in the valley of the Nile. But there is no variety in the vegetation, the physical structure of the country — an alluvial plain of very varying width, bordered by two ranges of limestone hills — rendering it a striking contrast to Palestine. ' For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, . . . where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs : but ... is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven ' (Deut. xi. 10, 11). Dean Stanley has graphically pictured, in a few words, the a.spect of this ' oasis of the primitive world': ' Immediately above the brown and blue waters of the broad, calm, lake-like river, rises a thick black bank of clod or mud, mostly in terraces. Green — unutterably green — mostly at the top of these banks, ' Desert of Sinai. ^ An Ordnance survey of Sinai, under the direction of Major Palmer and Captain (now Colonel) Wilson, was successfully carried out in 1868-9, and the results of the investigations were published by government authority in five large volumes of letter-press, maps, and photographic illustrations ; and subsequently epitomized in a useful handbook by Major Palmer. 26 SKETCH OF THE VEGETATION OF PALESTINE though sometimes creeping down to the water's edge, lies the Land of Egypt. Green — unbroken, save by the mud villages, which here and there lie in the midst of the verdure, like the marks of a soiled foot on a rich carpet ; or by the dyke, and channels which convey the life-giving waters through the thirsty land^.' It is as difficult to conceive of this narrow strip of verdant soil as the garden and granary of the ancient world, as to think of ' the basest of kingdoms ' as having once swayed the destinies of our race ; to the Hebrew patriarchs an asylum in famine, to their children 'a house of bitter ' bondage,' to their later descendants a perilous and deceitful ally. But here, as in Palestine, the changed ' aspects of nature ' are due, not to earth or sky or air, but to the influence of man. In the opinion of Sir Gardner Wilkinson, ' Egypt, if well cultivated, could now maintain many more inhabitants than at any former period, owing to the increased extent of the irrigated land.' Fewer timber-trees are now reared in Egypt than formerly, as in Palestine, and for a like reason ; the ancient inhabitants delighting in horticulture, and importing exotic trees, shrubs, and flowers, to adorn their groves and gardens. Most of the native plants are still represented, though in diminished numbers. But while the papyrus has disappeared from Lower Egypt the date-palm, there is some reason for thinking, is now cultivated to a greater extent than formerly. In and around the towns and villages it forms the most conspicuous and the most graceful object. Groves of palm, acacia, and tamarisk were, and still are, among the natural beauties of ^the Nile valley, and the sycomore- '¦ Sinai and Palestine. AND THE NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. 37 fig was once abundant there as in Palestine. The doum-palm with its branched stem and fan-like leaves is very common in Upper Egypt, adorning the fields and shading the sun-burnt soil ; and in some places forming ' little woods which enchant the sight.' The acacia, also, ' grows commonly on the parched and barren plains ' which are so numerous in the Thebaid. The vine, fig, olive, and pomegranate were diligently cultivated by the ancient inhabitants, together with a profusion of vegetables, melons and pumpkins among the chief, such as tempted the ' desert-wearied tribes ' to return to the land of their captivity. Of the 'corn in Egypt' no Bible reader needs to be reminded, wheat and barley being grown in every part of the country; and large crops of flax, lentils, peas, and beans were raised without difficulty from the rich alluvial soil. Such is a brief, and confessedly very imperfect, sketch of the general aspects of vegetation in Palestine and the surrounding countries. It seemed, however, needful to attempt to give an outline of the picture, as a whole, before proceeding to deal with the several elements of which it is composed. CHAPTER II. TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. The purpose of the present and succeeding chapters is to describe and illustrate the Botany of the Bible, not to enumerate the entire vegetable productions of Palestine and the neighbouring territories. The subject under consideration is thus limited to some six score species of plants, instead of several thousands. It has therefore been deemed expedient to consult the convenience of ordinary readers by adopting a scientific basis rather than a scientific arrangement, viewing each tree, or herb, or flower from a Biblical rather than a botanical stand point, while endeavouring to keep constantly in mind the results of Oriental travel and scientific research. It is scarcely necessary to remark that the identification of some few of the plants mentioned in Scripture remains, notwithstanding the labours of philologists and scientific travellers, a matter of uncertainty. No one can determine, for example, what precise production is meant by the ' Vine of Sodom,' or what the ' Almug trees ' were which Solomon imported into Palestine. But, beyond such doubtful cases, it should be clearly understood at the outset that even when a tree, or shrub, or flower has been identified, it by no means follows that the Hebrew or Greek name is precisely equivalent to the botanical one. The area, so to speak, of the former may be greater or less than that of the latter; mostly greater, but TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 3 1 occasionally less ; — that is to say, the original Scripture term often includes several species now considered distinct, and even different genera. For example, the word translated ' fir ' (and sometimes ' cypress ' and 'juniper') in our English version probably includes at least three species of the genus Pinus, now found in Palestine; viz. the stone pine {P- pinea), the Aleppo pine {P- Halepensis), and the coast pine (/". maritimd). On the other hand, four Hebrew words are used to denote the oaks of Palestine, of which there are some six or seven species, beside varieties ; but the respective names cannot be allotted with greater precision than this. The tendency of scientific classification being to mark distinctions, and denote them by new and appropriate terms, it necessarily happens that popular names of plants and animals are as a rule of much wider appli cation than technical ones. It is so in our own language, where such terms as ' rose,' ' lily,' ' apple,' Stc, are applied to widely different kinds of plants. But it will sometimes happen, where a species is very common or very con spicuous, that the scientific name is represented by several popular ones. This is the case with a few of the animals of Palestine ; the Hebrew having five names for the lion and four for the hcrgoat, whereas zoology has but one for each. It is natural to conclude that the Israelites after taking possession of the conquered territory would attach definite names to such members of its fauna and flora as were new to them ; and in that unscientific, or rather /r^-scientific, age would be governed by the outward characteristics of each animal or plant. Thus the popular names of organized beings are commonly descriptive, and usually faithful to their external cha- 32 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. racteristics. It is also observable that the comparative frequency of Biblical allusions to this or that member of the vegetable or animal kingdom affords a rough but by no means untrustworthy measure of its relative numbers or importance. The careful student of Scripture would need no actual survey or authoritative statement to convince him that the olive, the fig, the vine, and the pomegranate were "the most common fruit-trees of Palestine in ancient days. Before attempting to specify the particular trees and shrubs alluded to by the sacred writers, it may be well to notice some few general terms employed by them to denote aggregations of vegetable growth as an element in Eastern scenery. Here, as in so many individual cases, the finer shades of meaning as well as the pic- turesqueness of description observable in the Hebrew names are too often lost or obscured in our Authorized Version by a want of uniformity in the renderings. The late Dean Stanley sought to remedy this defect in the valuable and now well-known Appendix of Natural Terms, subjoined to his Sinai and Palestine ; and the Company of Revisers have since successfully endeavoured to introduce into the English translation a more uniform correspondence with the original text. In the Authorized Version four principal terms are employed to denote collective vegetation, as follows : — I. Forest (Heb. i^l yaai'). 2. Wood (Heb. ~, that ' Abraham planted a "grove" in Beersheba;' but the original word is here ^^^ {eshel), not i^-lty^| (asherah). Modern interpreters translate eshel by ' a tamarisk,' which in itself is probable enough, as five species of this graceful tree are found in and around Palestine ; and it is one of the few kinds native to the southern desert. But in i Sam. xxii. 6 and xxxi. 13 the same word is rendered ' a tree,' while in the parallel passage to the latter reference — i Chron. X. 12 — this same tree is called in the Authorized Version ' the oak,' and in the margin of the Revised Version, more precisely, 'the terebinth,^ 'ipX (elah). From a comparison of these passages it would seem safe to translate eshel simply ' a tree,' which in Abraham's case was probably a tamarisk, but in that of Saul a tree of more conspicuous growth and more spreading foliage. Under an oak or a terebinth he may have encamped, and under a similarly well-known landmark the bones of the ill-fated king and his sons may have found a final resting-place. 4. The rendering of the Hebrew words 'n?P (sebak) and ^30 (sobek) by the familiar term ' thicket ' is sufficiently accurate and expressive, denoting as they do the 'thicker' portions of vegetation, whether of trees or bushes. Examples, Gen. xxii. 13; Isaiah ix. 18; Jer. iv. 7. In numerous passages of the Old and New Testaments mention is made collectively of ' thorns ' and ' briers,' often in connexion with ' thistles ' or ' nettles.' The vast TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 35 abundance of shrubs and low plants of a spinous growth in modern Palestine is attested by every traveller, and is especially noticeable in the drier parts of that country. Abandoned, as so much of the territory of Israel has been for ages, to the unchecked operation of natural agencies, the prevalence of plants useless or noxious to man need excite no surprise, while it is in strict accordance with ancient predictions. But the prevalence of spinous plants was not confined to modern timesj as may be proved by a reference to a Hebrew concordance, from which we learn that these troublesome forms of vegetation are denoted by more than a dozen different words. Rabbinical writers make the number twenty- two ; but the lower estimate amply proves the variety and abundance of the things so signified. ' The land shall become briers and thorns ' is a threat repeatedly uttered by Old Testament prophets, as a penalty for disobedience; and that which has now become so general in Palestine was doubtless fulfilled temporarily and on a more limited scale long before the downfall of the Hebrew commonwealth. The fact furnishes only another illustration of the point already insisted on, that the Land of Promise was one whose excellences peculiarly needed the co-operation of human industry to render them blessings. In the absence of the ploughman and the sower, the very fertility of the soil, uniting with the dryness of the atmosphere and the often extreme heat of the sun, produced a condition highly favourable to the multiplication of spinous growths. Every student of botany knows that a thorn is an. undeveloped branch, which under cultivation may be made to put forth leaves and bear blossoms and fruit. Unfavourable conditions arrest growth, and what would D 2 36 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. have been a verdant bough becomes simply a mischievous thorn. And in Palestine a number of plant-genera are represented whose habit is thorny in a remarkable degree. The Jewish husbandman was therefore sur rounded by ambushed foes, numerous and formidable as Midianite or Philistine, and as ready to take possession of his fields and orchards, if the watchful eye and ready hand were wanting^^. The garden of the slothful man described in the Proverbs (xxiv. 31) was but the same phenomenon in miniature as that produced from time to time by desolating wars and diminished population, when not only ' the beasts of the field ' (Exod. xxiii. 39) but even the weeds found opportunities to ' multiply against ' the inhabitants. When peace and prosperity restored the balance of power to man, the thorny undergrowth around his settlements furnished a useful fuel for the preparation of his food (Psalm Iviii. 9 ; Eccles. vii. 6). It is perhaps scarcely needful to add that, in the multitude of possible meanings, the original words cannot generally be affixed with certainty to any particular species, or even to any genus, of spinous plant ; indeed, it is not probable that, in the majority of cases, any specific reference was implied in the Hebrew or Greek nouns used by the sacred writers, any more than by our corresponding English ones. Even the word used in the Gospels to denote the material of which the thorny crown of the Saviour was composed is of general significance, and has left room for innumerable conjec tures. The Zizyphus spina Christi, notwithstanding its botanical name, has no claim to be considered as other 1 The following genera, remarkable for spinous growths, are conspicu ously represented in Palestine — Astragalus, Fagonia, Ononis, Poterium, Zizyphus, with many others. (See under Bramble and Thistle in Chapter V.) TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 37 than a plant of the desert and valleys. The ' Christ's thorn,' popularly so called, — the Paliurus aculeatus of botanists, — fulflls all the required conditions ; having both branches and leaves studded with thorns, being flexible enough to be easily ' plaited ' into a crown, and being also ' common on all the rocky hills ' of the country. The Arabs call it samur, which seems to correspond with the Hebrew I'??' shamir, the ' brier ' of the prophecy of Isaiah (v. 6 ; vii. 23, &c.). Algum (or Almug) Trees (Heb. D''I3^3|5N, Ci''31»^X). ' The navy also of Hiram, that brought gold from Ophir, brought in from Ophir great plenty of almug trees and precious stones. And the king made of the almug trees pillars for the house of the Lord, and for the king's house, harps also and psalteries for singers : there came no such almug trees, nor were seen unto this day.' — i Kings x. 11, 12. ' Send me also cedar trees, fir trees, and algum trees, out of Lebanon.' — 2 Chron. ii. 8. ' And the king made of the algum trees terraces to the house of the Lord . . . there were none such seen before in the land of Judah.' — Ch. ix. 11, The above-quoted verses from the Old Testament comprise all that is authoritatively known concerning the Algum or Almug Tree, the wood of which was employed by the Wise King of Israel for such important purposes ; and thus the first timber-tree which in alphabetical order claims our notice exemplifies the difficulties of ancient and Oriental botany. Enough, however, is stated to indicate a valuable wood of varied capabilities, growing somewhere in the Lebanon district within the dominions of the Tyrian monarch, yet evidently indigenous to some other country where it grew to a size and excellence unattained in Syria. There is no need to suppose, with Rosenmiiller, that the writer of the Book of Chronicles was in error in affirming that Solomon asked for Algum trees from Lebanon. Hiram, like his Jewish contemporary. 38 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. like Nebuchadnezzar and other Eastern kings, may have formed plantations of foreign trees, and may have so far succeeded as to make the algummim (D''l3^3pN) available for economic use, though inferior to those grown on their native soil. No experipients, Evelyn remarks, ' are more kingly than that of planting for posterity.' What that native soil was must remain a matter of some uncertainty, the more so as the situation of Ophir cannot be determined. Professor Max Miiller has observed that the name of this tree, like those translated in i Kings x. 22, ' ivory,' ' apes,' and ' peacocks,' is of foreign origin ; and he identifies the word with the Sanskrit valguka, which denotes the red sandal-wood of commerce, Pterocarpus santalinus of botanists. This tree is of the leguminous or pod-bearing order, and inhabits the Coro- mandel Coast and Ceylon, where it grows to the size of a walnut tree. The wood is heavy, of a black colour externally, but red inside. In the East it is employed in the manufacture of idols, and for musical instruments, examples of which may be seen in the Indian Museum at South Kensington. In Europe it is chiefly used for the purposes of the dyer and colour-maker. Allied species of Pterocarpus yield the products known . as dragon's blood and gum kino. Solomon's artificers appear to have fashioned the Algum wood into columns, or, more probably, stairs or balustrades, for the temple and palace ; and into harps, of two or more kinds, for the service of the sanctuary. Ash (Heb. P.^ oren). ' He planteth an ash (R. V. fir tree), and the rain doth nourish it.' — Isaiah xliv. 14. The word rendered as above, in the Authorized and Revised Versions respectively, occurs only in the passage TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 39 quoted. The Septuagint and oldest Latin Version translate it ' PINE,' and one of these conifers suits the con text very well. Of the four species growing in Palestine, the Aleppo pine (Pinus Halepetisis) is cultivated on the coast as a barrier against the drifting sands ; the pinaster (P. pinaster) is grown near Beirut ; the larger kinds of juniper (represented by seven species in Pales tine) would also be reckoned among ' pines ; ' and J. thuri- fera may be the ' large cedar ' mentioned by Pliny as growing in Phoenicia and furnishing ' images of the gods ^.' Virgil speaks of the fceauty of the pine when planted in gardens, and advises the Roman bee-master to cultivate this tree round his hives, supplying ' friendly showers ' with his own hand ^. We may safely conclude that one or more of the pine tribe above mentioned was in the mind of the prophet in his contemptuous portraiture of the idolaters of his day. (See FiR.) Bay Tree (Heb. n-jT« ezrach). ' I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree ' (R. V. a green tree in its native soil). — Psalm xxxvii. 35. Although the Bay Laurel (Laurus nobilis) is found in the Holy Land, on the Carmel range, on Tabor, and on the hills of Gilead east of Jordan, it seems tolerably certain that David's simile has been correctly interpreted by the Revisers, as having a more general reference ; the Hebrew word meaning simply ' native born.' If the Psalmist had designed to mention any particular tree he would probably have chosen the stately cedar, as Ezekiel afterwards did with a similar object (ch. xxxi), and not the comparatively humble though fragrant evergreen. 1 Nat. Hist. lib. xiii. c. 11. '^ Eclog. vii. 65 ; Georg. iv. 112, 141. 40 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. To him (unlike the classic poets) the laurel would sug gest neither sacred nor poetic associations. We cannot therefore admit the tree of Phoebus among Bible plants even on the plea quaintly urged by the author of the Religio Medici, who was ' unwilling to exclude ' the bay ' from the honour of having its name in Scripture.' Box (Heb. -m^'r\ Uashshur). ' The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir tree, the pine tree, and the box together.' — Isaiah Ix. 13. Although mentioned but twice, or at most thrice, in Scripture, there appears sufficient grounds for accepting the rendering of our English Version in the case of the familiar Box-TREE (Buxus sempervirens). Though not among the giants of the forest, it has a very wide range of distribution from Western Europe to China and Persia, flourishing in the Levant, and under favourable condi tions attaining a height of thirty feet. It is fond of a cretaceous soil, and grows luxuriantly on Boxhill, Surrey, and in other special localities in Bucks, Gloucestershire, and Kent. We are not surprised therefore to find it on the chalk of Lebanon in the present day, as in the time of the prophet Isaiah. When well-developed, the box is by no means devoid of external grace ; it is accordingly promised in the passage above cited ' to beautify ' the restored ' sanctuary ' in Messianic days. The Persian poets also compare a beautiful woman to a box-tree ; Virgil speaks v/ith admiration of the ' waving box-groves of Cytorus ^ ; ' and Ovid alludes to its continual ver dancy I The wood of the box is fine and durable, and its employment in modern wood-engraving is too well known to need description. The Roman poets allude ' Georg. lib. ii. 437. ¦' Met. lib. x. 97. TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 4 1 to its uses in turning and inlaying, and for making flutes ; but apparently the Tyrians had long before constructed the benches of their galleys of box and inlaid them with ivory. Such at least seems to be the preferable render ing of Ezek. xxvii. 6, ' They have made thy benches of ivory inlaid in boxwood ' (R. V.). The box-tree is the subjecf of another prophetic promise in Isaiah xli. 19, where it is said, 'I will set in the desert [i. e. the Arabah, or dry southern part of the Jordan valley) the fir tree, the pine, and the box tree together.' (See under FiR, &c.) Cedar (Heb. T"1X erez). ' The trees of the Lord are full of sap ; the cedars of Lebanon, which He hath planted.' — Psalm civ. 16. The extensive and important tribe to which the pines, cedars, cypresses, junipers, firs, larches, and other well- known woodland trees belong, is represented in Palestine by seven species of juniper, four of pine, the common cypress, and — grandest of all the forms of vegetation known to the Hebrews — the Cedar of Lebanon. This order (the Coniferx, or cone-bearers of botanists) is extensively diffused through the old and new worlds, and though not remarkable for the number of its con tained species, covers districts of vast extent in the northern temperate zone. It includes the giants of the vegetable kingdom — the pines of Norfolk Island and of the Rocky Mountains, and the still loftier Seqtioias of the Yosemite Valley, California ; while several coniferous genera are remarkable for their longevity, such as the pine, cypress, and yew. Of the last-named, there are individual trees in our own country whose age is com puted at from 2000 to 3000 years. 42 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. Coniferous trees invariably give character to the scenery amidst which they grow. The lofty tapering trunk, the gradations of tint in the needle-like evergreen foliage, and in some kinds the horizontal spread of the crown of leaves, give an aspect of stately and solemn grandeur to groves and forests of- cone-bearing trees ; and we cease to wonder at the association of yews and cypresses with the quiet resting-places of the dead. Of all this interesting tribe none possesses an historical celebrity comparable to that of the Cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus Libani). It is the chief representative of the cedars of Western Asia, though a variety with smaller leaves has been discovered in the island of Cyprus. The Atlantic Cedar (C. Atlantica) is a native of Algeria and Morocco ; while in the Far East grows the deodar (C. Deodar a), the well-known cedar of the Himalayas, regarded by some botanists as a variety of C. Libani. The range of the true Cedar of Lebanon, though not (as was once supposed) restricted to the particular locality resorted to by a long succession of ancient and modern travellers, finds its chief habitat in the ranges of Taurus and Lebanon ; the latter being its southernmost limit. Shorn, as it doubtless is, of much of its pristine glory, ' the forest of Lebanon ' still numbers between four and five hundred trees ; the trunk of the largest specimen being 47 feet in circumference, and its height from 90 to 100 feet. The physiognomy of this noble tree is familiar to English eyes from its frequent occurrence in groves, gardens, and plantations. A tradition ascribes to Queen Elizabeth the planting of a cedar at Hendon Place, in Middlesex, where it seems that a tree of that species was destroyed by a hurricane in 1779. But, at any rate, Cedars of Lebanon were introduced into this country TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 43 before the close of the seventeenth century, since which time they have become naturalized, ripening their cones readily in our uncertain climate, though not attaining to the stature of their Syrian congeners. Almost every traveller in Northern Palestine has recorded his impressions of the principal grove of cedars now remaining near Kadisha ; and these descriptions would fill a volume. A quotation may, however, be fitly given from the glowing pages of Lamartine, and from the more scientific observations of the Rev. Canon Tristram. 'At some distance on the left,' wrote M. de Lamartine in 1833, ' in a kind of semicircular hollow formed by the last curves of Lebanon, we observed a large black spot upon the snow, — which was the celebrated clump of cedars. They crown, like a diadem, the brow of the mountain ; they overlook all the numberless spacious villages that slope away beneath them ; the sea and the sky blend in their horizon. ' The Arabs of all sects entertain a traditional venera tion for these trees. They attribute to them not only a vegetative power which enables them to live eternally, b'ut also an intelligence which causes them to manifest signs of wisdom and foresight, similar to those of in stinct in animals and reason in man. . . . Alas ! notwith standing all, " Bashan languishes ; Carmel and the flower of Lebanon wither;" these trees diminish in every succeeding age. Travellers formerly counted thirty or forty ; more recently seventeen ; more recently still, only a dozen. There are now but seven ; these, however, from their size and general appearance, may be fairly presumed to have existed in Biblical times.' Thirty years later. Canon Tristram described the same 44 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. impressive scene : — ' The snow had been so far melted by the summer's sun that we were able to ascend by the highest pass, very close to the summit of Lebanon, 10,000 feet high, and descend almost directly upon the cedars. . . . No sooner had we surmounted the pass, than one of those sudden panoramas which only such an elevation could afford burst upon us by surprise. ... In the nearer foreground' was a sort of hollow, or basin, opening out to the west — the origin of the romantic Kadisha [river]. It was bare and rocky, and its sides were fringed here and there with the rough knolls which marked the deposits of ancient glaciers, the " moraines " of the Lebanon. All was brown and bare, save on one dark spot, where stood a clump of trees, the famous cedar-grove. Viewed from above, the effect of that grove is much more remarkable than when, as is generally the case, it is approached from below. ... A few separate trees stood out from the mass, but the general appearance of the grove was of a thick clump, as though it had been a fragment of some ancient forest. ' From the top of the pass, it seemed as though in a few minutes we might reach the cedars ; but we had to wind for two hours down the rocky slope. . . . The grove itself was vocal with life. . . . We picketed our horses under one of the ancient patriarchs of the forest. ' The trees are not too close, nor are they entirely confined to the grove. Though the patriarchs are of enormous growth, they are no higher than the younger trees, many of which reach a circumference of eighteen feet. In the topmost boughs, ravens, hooded ' crows, kestrels, hobbys, and wood-owls were secreted in abun dance, but so lofty are the trees that the birds were out of reach of ordinary shot. . . . The breeze as it soughed CEDARS OF LEBANON. TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 47 through the dark boughs seemed to breathe sounds of solemnity and awe, and to proclaim them to be " the trees of the Lord," " the cedars of Lebanon which He hath planted.'" Other groves occur at no great distance, one of con siderable extent, and another above the site of the ancient Gebal, whence Hiram's artificers came (i Kings V. 18, marg.). By the Hebrew poets, as every Bible reader knows, these forests on their northern borders were regarded with sacred though not with superstitious awe. The cedars were the type of power and majesty, of grandeur and beauty, of strength and permanence : — ' trees of Je hovah ' planted by His right hand among the ' great mountains ; ' masterpieces of His creative skill ; match less in lofty stature, wide-spreading shade, perpetual verdure, refreshing perfume, and unfading fruitfulness. Some of the finest imagery in Old Testament song is drawn from this oft-frequented source. The mighty conquerors of olden days, the despots of Assyria and the Pharaohs of Egypt, the proud and idolatrous monarchs of Judah, the Hebrew commonwealth itself, the warlike Amorites of patriarchal times, and the moral majesty of the Messianic age, are all compared to the towering cedar in its regal loftiness and supremacy. (See Isaiah ii. 13; Ezek. xvii. 3, 32, 23; xxxi. 3-18; Amos ii. 9 ; Zech. xi. i, 2, &c.) It was the boast of Sennacherib that he would destroy, after the manner of his nation, as shown by the cuneiform inscriptions, the vegetable glory of Lebanon (2 Kings xix. 23) ; and in like manner the cedars and ' firs ' are represented as exulting over the downfall of the Babylonian power, saying, ' Since thou art laid down, no feller is come up 48 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. against us ' (Isaiah xiv. 8) ^. The passage just quoted from Ezekiel xxxi. forms part of a magnificent description of the giant tree and of the almost superhuman grandeur of which it is made the emblem. Though generally the type of outward exaltation, the cedar, in its steady and continual growth, is fitly likened to the spiritual progress of the righteous man (Psalm xcii. 13). Cedars are mentioned but once in the Pentateuch, in Numb. xxiv. 6, where Balaam, who had doubtless seen them growing amidst his native mountains (xxiii. 7), compares the far-stretching encampments of the Israelite tribes in the Jordan valley to ' cedar trees beside the waters.' Turning to more prosaic allusions, the frequent refer ences in the Old Testament to its economic uses abun dantly prove the high value which the Hebrews set upon the wood of this tree. Its soundness and freedom from knots, its almost unlimited durability, and its agreeable colour and fragrance, fully account for its employment in the best class of public and private buildings. In this country the growth is too rapid to afford a durable wood ; but in its native forests the timber is of superior excellence ; in accordance with the statements of ancient writers, whether Oriental or Classical. It is in the great architectural achievements of Solomon that the cedar comes into special prominence. The chief wood-work of the first Temple and of the royal palaces (like that of David, i Chron. xiv. i) was of this material, one of the latter edifices being named ' the house of the forest of Lebanon' (i Kings vi, vii). The preference shown by the monarch for this wood led to its becoming ' See Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, pp. 105, iii, &c., and Babylonian Life and History, pp. 31, 33. TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 49 as common in the Hebrew capital during his reign as the inferior timber of the sycomore-fig^ had been in previous times (i Kings x. 27 ; 2 Chron. ix. 27 ; Song of Solomon i. 17). The later kings of Judah had similar dwellings (Jer. xxii. 14, 15), and the same is implied of the Assyrian monarchs by the prophet Zephaniah (ii. 14) in his denunciation of Nineveh. In the British Museum are some fragments of wood, brought by Sir A. H. Layard from the Assyrian metropolis, and which Mr. Carruthers has identified as cedar. The Tyrians are said by Ezekiel (xxvii. 5) to have used the trunks of Lebanon cedars, as later seafaring nations those of ' Norwegian pine,' ' to be the masts Of some tall amiral.' And Herod the Great, according to the testimony of Josephus, used cedar-wood in his restoration of the second Temple. The above and other historical references afford some idea of the enormous consumption of these noble forest trees by the Tyrians, on behalf of David (i Chron. xiv. I ; xxii. 4) and Solomon, and, as we may be sure, on their own account in equal or larger measure. If to these and like demands upon the Syrian forests we add the wanton destruction of useful trees by invading armies, we need not wonder at the diminished glories of Lebanon, or doubt the former extent of its pines and cedars, but rather feel surprise that the ' shadowy shroud ' of vege tation has not long since been rent away. Other nations beside those we have mentioned are said to have valued the cedar. It was imported by the Egyptians from Syria for various kinds of cabinet-work ' See under Sycomore-fig in the next chapter. E 50 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. and coffins for their embalmed dead. Rameses, the Sesostris of the historians, is even said to have built ships of this material. It was used in the great Persian edifices at Persepolis, in the first temple of Diana at Ephesus, and that of Apollo at Utica, where the age of the cedar timbers was computed at 3000 years. Believing the wood to be both imperishable and antiseptic, valuable manuscripts were committed to cabinets of cedar-wood ; and, according to Vitruvius and Horace, books were smeared with oil of cedar in order to preserve them from decay. ' How can those who write only for gain (asks the poet) produce works that shall deserve to be anointed with cedar or enclosed in cypress ^ ? ' The same oil, we are told by Herodotus, was used by Egyptian embalmers to preserve the body from decay. There is, however, no mention in Scripture of any economic use of the cedar, despite the high value set on it, except as timber. Virgil ^ mentions the wood as employed in his day for dwellings, for images of the gods, and as burnt for its perfume ; but Dr. Daubeny is of opinion that the Latin word cedrus included also the known species of juniper, and that one or more of the larger kinds of the latter may have been intended by the poet. The remark just quoted may be applied to the account given in the Book of Leviticus of the ceremonial obser vances connected with the cleansing of leprosy (ch. xiv) in which ' Cedar-wood ' is directed to be taken, as also in. the sacrificial rites described in Numb, xix ; in both cases, no doubt, with an intelligible symbolical meaning. As the wood of the true cedar was not obtainable in the Sinaitic wilderness, we may fairly conclude that some ' Horace, A. P. 331-2. '' Georg. ii. 443 ; iii. 414; ALneid, vii. 13. 178. TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 51 closely allied tree is intended ; and the savin (Juniperus sabina), a common bush in the peninsula, satisfactorily answers all the requirements of the above passages. It grows in Southern Europe and South-western Asia, and is not uncommon in English shrubberies. Oil of savin is also used in medicine. Chesnut (Heb. Iil2"15? armon). 'The chesnut trees (R. V. plane trees) were not like his branches.' — Ezek. xxxi. 8. As the chesnut is not a native of Palestine, some other rendering of the Hebrew word armon must be sought for ; and botanists are agreed that the Oriental Plane (Platanus orientalis) is the tree mentioned in Gen. XXX. 37, and in the Book of Ezekiel as above quoted. This is one of the most agreeable and con spicuous objects in the vegetation of the river-side and other watered districts of Syria and the Holy Land. It grows wild on the banks of streams in the Lebanon district, and is cultivated wherever sufficient moisture can be found. It is chiefly remarkable for the umbrageous shade which it affords, so grateful in the warmer regions of Europe and Asia. This is due to its broad palmated leaves, and to the horizontal growth of its branches, yielding a perfect and delightful protection from the sun's heat. T° this the prophet Ezekiel undoubtedly points in the passage just cited. He is comparing the Assyrian monarchy to a majestic cedar, and adds, ' The fir trees were not like his boughs, and the plane (chesnut) trees were not like his branches; nor any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty.' Casual as the botanical allusion is, it is sufficient to indicate the E 3 52 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. estimation in which the plane tree was held by the con temporaries of Ezekiel. Under favourable conditions it grows to a height of seventy feet, and yields a white and fine-grained wood suited for various economic purposes. It is said that the Turks formerly employed plane-wood for ship-building. The bark is smooth and whitish, and scales off annually in patches ; this may illustrate Jacob's stratagem (Gen. xxx. 37). The flowers are minute, in globular and pendent catkins, whence a number of downy seeds are shed in the autumn. The range of P. orientalis is from Europe through Western Asia to Cashmere ; in the Western Hemi sphere the American plane (P- occidentalis), an allied species, replaces it in corresponding latitudes. Both have been naturalized in this country for more than two hundred years ; and Lqrd Bacon is credited with having planted some of the earliest specimens of the Oriental plane in his grounds at Verulam. From the Greek and Roman historians it would Seem that an almost extravagant value was set on the plane tree. Pliny says that it was introd,uced into Southern Europe from Asia Minor via Sicily, and that some indi viduals in his day were of marvellous dimensions. A magnificent specimen growing in Lycia contained in its hollow trunk a room about eighty feet in diameter, in which a Roman proconsul entertained eighteen guests at a banquet. A like story is told of a tree growing in the garden of Caligula's villa at Velitra. In Athens and other Greek cities avenues of plane were planted, as in Persia to this day, forming cloistered walks for the pupils of Plato and Aristotle ; and under their shade in an island of the Levant, called Plataniste, the young Spartans used to perform their athletic exercises. A TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 53 splendid group grows on the shores of the Bosphorus, the largest being 90 feet in height and 150 in circum ference. It was under some such gigantic specimen as these that the dissolute and wayward Xerxes halted with his enormous army on his way to invade Greece ; and here he frittered away an interval of critical importance in paying mad compliments to this noble plant. The allusion of the Jewish prophet to the spreading foliage of the plane is corroborated by a passage in the apocryphal Book of Ecclesiasticus, where wisdom is likened to ' a plane tree ' which has ' grown up by the water' (ch. xxiv. 14). Cypress (Heb. Hpri tirzah). ' He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the cypress and the oak.' — Isaiah xliv. 14. As the word nnn (tirzah) occurs only in the passage above quoted, there is little in the way of internal evidence to determine its precise meaning. It is derived from '11? (taraz), signifying 'to be hard;' and as it is closely connected with the oak, the rendering of the Revised Version, 'holm tree' — following the oldest Latin translation — seems a probable one. We learn from Pausanias that the evergreen oak was used in the manu facture of idols, and we know that among the species growing in Palestine the ValoNIA Oak (Quercus segilops) reaches noble proportions, and forms forests in Bashan and Galilee. It was also regarded by classic writers as the loftiest of its kind in Greece, and as yielding the best timber. The acorns of this species, according to Hooker, are used in Syria for food. We may there fore accept the above translation as substantially correct ; 54 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. though, botanically regarded, the name 'holm oak' should be restricted to the evergreen oak of Southern Europe (Q. ilex). Ebony (Heb. i3''J3n hobnini). ' The men of Dedan brought thee horns of ivory and ebony.' — Ezek. xxvii. 15. Dedan, a name occurring twice in the chapter above quoted, represents, as we find from comparing Gen. x. 7 with XXV. 3, two different tribes ; the one Cushite, the other Semitic, and descended from Abraham by Keturah. Geographically, therefore, two different localities are also indicated as inhabited by Dedanim. The Semitic tribe probably inhabited some part of Idumea, and supplied from the wool of their flocks chariot-cloths for the nobles and soldiers of Tyre (Ezek. xxvii. 20). The ' ivory ' and ' ebony ' were obtained from the Farther East, through the Cushite race, who seem to have settled in Arabia and occupied themselves in commerce (ver. 15). The black-hued wood familiar to us under the name of ebony is one of several species of the genus Diospyros, natives chiefly of tropical India and Ceylon, whence so many products were brought, in and after the days of Solomon, into Syria and Palestine via Arabia. It is however represented also in Europe and North America, and a recent writer gives South Africa and the Mauritius as additional localities. This confirms the remark of the poet Virgil, ' India alone yields the black ebony\' and that of Pliny, Herodotus, and Lucan, that ebony came from Ethiopia. The BLACK Ebony (D. melanoxylon) is brought from the Coromandel Coast ; D. Ebenaster is termed the bastard ebony of Ceylon ; while the allied ^ Georg. lib. ii. 116. TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 5^ Coromandel wood, with its beautifully-variegated grain, is obtained from the same island. The trees of this genus are large and slow of growth, with simple leaves and a bell-shaped flower. The outer wood is white and soft, but the inside turns hard and black with age ; thus acquiring the properties which have rendered it so much valued by ancient and modern nations. Dr. Bonar remarks that in travelling in Pales tine and the Desert his dragoman carried an ebony staff as his wand of office. The Egyptians were well ac quainted with the use of ebony, as may be seen by the boxes, images, and other articles, wholly or partially made of that wood, in our National collection. Fir (Heb. typa ierosh). Pine (Heb. in-iri li'dliar). ' Thefr tree, the pine tree, and the box.' — Isaiah Ix. 13. In speaking of the cedars of Lebanon reasons have been given for including the junipers under the term used by the Old Testament writers to denote those mightier trees of the forest. The word berosh (uniformly translated ' flr ' in the Authorized Version) seems, in like manner, to comprehend all the other coniferous trees of Palestine. These consist oi four species of Fine, and the funereal Cypress. The true firs (abies) are not found in that country ; but the distinction is scarcely recognized except by botanists. In common parlance the Pinus sylvestris of our own i.slands is called the ' Scotch fir' ; but, botanically, the pines have needle-like leaves in clusters of two, three, or five ; and the scales of their cones do not fall off. The leaves of the firs are more flattened, do not grow in clusters, and the cone-scales are ^6 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. deciduous or falling. The native pines of Palestine are the Pinaster (P. pinaster), the Aleppo or maritime (P. Halepensis), the stone (P. pinea), and the Pyrenean (P- Pyrenaica). The cypress is the common species (C. sem pervirens), the ' mournful cypress ' of Western Asia and Southern Europe. An examination of the Scripture allusions to ' cedars ' and ' fir trees ' will show that these represent two groups of conifers closely associated in their native habitats and in the value set upon them ; ' firs,' however, being deemed inferior to the majestic cedars (cf. i Kings v. 8, 10 ; 3 Chron. ii. 8 ; Song of Sol. i. 17 ; Isaiah xiv. 8 ; Ezek. xxvii. 5; Zech. xi. i, 3). The '^011' (tidhar), ren dered 'pine' in Isaiah xli. 19 and Ix. 13, is ranked with trees of recognized beauty and importance. Nearly one-half of the Biblical references to this family are in connexion with Solomon's architectural enter prises, cedar and pine-wood supplying the timber for temple and palaces. With these we may include the. cypress on the authority of Josephus. David and his choir performed on instruments constructed of ' fir ' (2 Sam. vi. 5). The prophet Isaiah thrice speaks in terms which suggest the value or beauty, or both, of the pine tribe (ch. xli. 19 ; Iv. 13 ; Ix. 13). Nahum, in his splendid description of the invading armies of Media (ch. ii. 3, R.V.), seems to imply that the warriors' spear-shafts were of this material ; and Ezekiel states that the Lebanon pine-woods supplied the Tyrians with planking for their ships (ch. xxvii. 5). So Virgil long afterwards wrote of the value of ' the pine for ships 1.' The lofty and graceful stature of the cypress is twice alluded to in the apocryphal Book of Ecclesiasticus (xxiv. 13 and 1. 10), as 1 Georg. lib. ii. 442, 443. TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 57 the thick foliage of the pines is associated by Ezekiel with that of the cedars (ch. xxxi. 8). The fruit is but once mentioned, in the prophet Hosea (xiv. 8), ' I am like a green fir tree ; from Me is thy fruit found.' The pines inhabit the temperate regions of both hemi spheres, and have been known from time immemorial as among the most useful of cone-bearing trees. At least three of the four Syrian species, above enumerated, besides the cypress, were known to classical writers, and are still valued on the continent of Europe. The pinaster or cluster pine forms a small forest on the sand-hills near Beiriit, where (like P. Halepensis) it has probably been planted to check the incursions of the drifting soil. It has also been employed in reclaiming the barren landes on the western coast of France. It grows in Italy as far south as Genoa, where it gives place to the more important Aleppo or maritime pine. This is the commonest species in Palestine, ranging from Lebanon to the hills south of Jerusalem, and from the maritime plain on the west to the mountains beyond Jordan. Travellers have repeatedly recorded how a ' zone of pines ' marks the change of temperature due to elevation on these Syrian heights. Carmel has still its pine-woods, but these, like other timber-trees, were much more numerous and extensive in former ages. The wood of the Aleppo pine is said to be somewhat inferior ; but this may only be due to local causes. The stone pine, which is common on the northern slopes of Lebanon, is probably the species which the Romans used to plant in gardens and around bee-hives. Until lately there existed near Ravenna a magnificent forest of these pines, nearly forty miles in extent, and compared, not extravagantly, to a grove of palms for 58 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. grace and beauty. This species is not only a charac teristic feature in the Italian landscape, but also yields a fine-grained wood ; while the kernels of its seeds have been much esteemed as a delicacy from ancient times, jars containing them preserved in honey having been found in the larders of the buried city of Pompeii. It is possible that the Hebrews may have known of the edible qualities of these pine-seeds. The Pyrenean pine also grows on Lebanon as well as on the range from which it derives its specific name. The wood is of similar value to that of the preceding kind. Bishop Arculf, one of the early travellers in Palestine (a.D. 700), mentions a fir (pine ?) wood ' covering a low hill some three miles north of Hebron.' He suggestively adds that the timber was carried to Jerusalem for fuel. Such statements account for the disappearance of many a grove and forest of olden time. The same traveller says the Sea of Tiberias was 'surrounded with thick woods.' The cypress was doubtless included in the language of praise and admiration accorded to ' fir-trees ' by Old Testament poets and seers ; and it is not unlikely that either the cypress or the stone pine may be the tidhar of the prophet Isaiah — a tree not particularized else where ; while the special durability of its timber was fully recognized among woods of a like kind. But there is no trace of that association of the cypress with the resting-places of the dead which is so conspicuous among the modern Orientals, even in Palestine itself, and has prevailed in Southern Europe for at least two thousand years. Horace reminds his friend that of all the trees he had planted none save the cypress would be able to ' serve their master beyond the present brief TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 59 stage of existence ^' The oldest tree in Europe is a cypress in Lombardy, which, tradition says, existed in Julius Cffisar's days ; and we read that the doors of St. Peter's Cathedral at Rome were made of cypress wood ; laws were inscribed on tablets of cypress ; heroes were buried in coffins of this material, and the Egyptians im ported it for a like purpose, together with cedar and flr. This tree is not uncommon in gardens and cemeteries in our own country, as in France, though the date of its introduction is not known ; but its home is in regions more free from excess of moisture, and characterized by a higher summer temperature than Great Britain. Gopher Wood (Heb. ISll gopher). ' Make thee an ark of gopher wood.' — Gen. vi. 14. The word 1S5 (gopher) occurs nowhere in Scripture except in the above passage, and is therefore wisely left untranslated in both our modern Versions. A very ancient tradition, however, asserts that the ark built by Noah was of cypress wood. A like statement is made by historians as to the fleet of ships built by the Assyrian queen Semiramis, and of the armadas constructed by Alexander and sent forth from Babylon. We know, moreover, that the cypress, and more than one species of pine, with other resinous trees, are still found in the regions watered by the Tigris and Euphrates^. It may therefore be at least affirmed that there is no im probability in the traditional view, though nothing can be inferred from the original term employed by the writer of the Book of Genesis. ' Carm. lib. ii. od. 14. ^ Compare also TDis kopher, ' pitch,' in Gen. vi. 14. 6o TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. Heath (Heb. "ij?")?? arar, "iJrtny. aroer). ' He shall be like the heath in the desert.' — Jei». xvii. 6. Every reader is familiar with the beautiful tribe of plants known as ' heaths ' and ' heather,' both those which carpet our native moorlands, and the more luxuriant Ericas of the Cape, so frequent in English conservatories. But the hills of Palestine, while abounding in honey- yielding flowers, never afford to the traveller a view of tracts ' Where the wild heath displays its purple dyes.' The order is scarcely represented in Syria, the lovely arbutus or strawberry tree excepted ; and not at all in the districts bordering Canaan on the south. Hence it is easy to pronounce the Authorized rendering of the Hebrew words arar and aroer, in the above passage and in ch. xlviii. 6 of the same book respectively, a manifest error, unfortunately perpetuated in the Revised Version. The latter gives, as a marginal alternative, ' a tamarisk,' which from a geographical point of view is fairly admis sible. But it may be well to examine both the word and the context. In the former of the two passages cited the prophet con.trasts the godly man with him who ' maketh flesh his arm ' ; comparing the former to ' a tree planted by the waters,' that 'spreadeth out her roots' by the 'flowing river,' and the latter to 'the heath in the desert'; adding, he 'shall not see when good Cometh, but shall inhabit \!a% parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.' In ch. xlviii. 6, Moab is denounced, and her citizens bidden to ' flee . . . and be like the heath in the wilderness.' It seems evident therefore that the first reference is to TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 6l the barren and desolate districts common in the neigh bourhood of ' the Salt Sea ' and the region further south, rather than to the Wilderness of Sinai ; and to some bare and naked shrub, just able to exist in the ungenial soil, but deriving no access of life and verdure from the return of the spring. There are many weird and stunted shrubs in that 'wilderness' which well illustrate the prophet's simile ; and as in the other portion of the figure no specific ' tree ' is mentioned, it is fair to conclude that in this the allusion is equally general — ' a naked bush in the desert.' The reference seems to be identical in ch. xlviii. 6 ; here the margin of the Authorized Version has ' a naked tree,' which might advantageously have been retained by the Revisers. Juniper (Heb. ^^p ratherii). ' He lay and slept under s. juniper tree.' — i Kings xix. 5. The leguminous or pod-bearing order of plaijts, to which so many important vegetables belong, is, like the labiate order, very largely represented in Palestine, more so indeed than any other ^, and there, as in our own land, it serves both for use and ornament. In the 'south country' and in the 'great and terrible wilderness,' in the warm districts surrounding the Dead Sea, and in the picturesque ravines which cleave the hills east and west of the Jordan valley, grows one of the loveliest of Bible plants — a species of BROOM or genista. Travellers have dwelt with delight upon the beauty of its pink-white blossoms, clustered on the hill-sides or dotting the open plains, and exhaling an odour as sweet 1 The Report of the Palestine Exploration Fund Survey enumerates 358 species. 62 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. as that of an English beanfield. It is called by the Arabs rit'm or retem, and hence has received from botanists the technical name oiRetama or Genista rxtam. The characteristics of the plant correspond so closely with what is stated of the rothem (incorrectly translated 'juniper' in our Versions) that there seems no reason to doubt the identity. The dispirited prophet in his flight from the furious Jezebel rested and slept under a rothem tree ; so the modern Arabs are glad to avail themselves of the shelter of the retem, which grows to a height of from eight to ten feet. Dean Stanley and Drs. Robinson and Bonar, as well as other travellers, also speak of its slight but grateful shade in the ' weary land ' of the south. In Psalm cxx. 4 ' coals of juniper ' are mentioned as of proverbial fierceness ; and we are in formed that the charcoal of the retem is so highly valued that the Bedouins destroy the shrub in large numbers in order to sell the produce for the Egyptian markets. The patriarch Job (xxx. 4) speaks of outcasts being driven by the presence of famine to ' cut up juniper roots for their meat' ; a striking figure of speech, since the roots of the desert broom are bitter and nauseous. Mr. Smith, late of Kew, in his little work on Bible Plants repeats the suggestion of the botanist Ursinus, that the edible part of the retem root may have been a parasitic growth which forms upon it as the ' broomrapes ' do on our native species, and was formerly prized by the Maltese for its medicinal virtues, and, it is said, its fitness for food when boiled. The Arabs plant the retem above the remains of their dead. One of the stations of the Israelites in their wanderings was named Rithmah, doubtless from the abundance of the rothem in the neighbourhood (Numb, xxxiii. 18). TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 63 The Spaniards apply the name retamas to the closely allied species known as Spanish broom, planted by them in shifting sands, and given to their goats for food. The poet of Roman husbandry sings of ' pliant ' and ' lowly genistx ' yielding fodder for the flocks and shade to the shepherd ¦'. Our native broom figures more than once in history, and has served both for food and physic. The old herbalist Gerarde gives a long account of its virtues in the cure of human ills. Mulberry (Heb. N?3 5aka). ' When thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees.' — 2 Sam. v. 24. Although the black and white mulberry are exten sively cultivated in Palestine at the present day, when the production of silk affords so important a means of subsistence to the inhabitants of the Lebanon district, the mulberry (Morus) does not seem to be mentioned in the Old or New Testament. In the English Versions ' mulberry tree ' is given as the equivalent of the Hebrew baka in the parallel narra tives of one of David's victories over the Philistines (2 Sam.v. 23 and i Chron. xiv. 14), and in Psalm Ixxxiv. 6 as a proper name (' Valley of Baca,' see margin). It is derived from a root naa (bakah), signifying ' to fall in drops,' and thus ' to weep.' The most natural interpre tation of the incident in David's history is that a sign was given him as a test of obedience, and a pledge of success in the coming struggle with his powerful foes. This sign was the sound of a rushing blast through the trees in the valley, emblematic of the presence of Him who ' walketh upon the wings of the wind.' It would 1 Georg. ii. 12, 434, 435. 64 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. accord with that ' fitness of things ' which so remarkably characterizes the instruments chosen for the manifesta tion of supernatural power, that the tree selected in this in.stance should be one which would naturally be responsive to the action of wind. Among such the Poplars have long been conspicuous for their 'trem bling,' * shivering,' and ' quaking ' movements when the slightest breath of air is stirring — a circumstance due to the length and horizontal flattening of the leaf-stalks in several species, notably the aspen (P. tremula) with its ' many twinkling leaves'^. Four species grow in Pales tine : the Black, White, and Lombardy poplars, well known in Europe, and a species called P. Euphratica, which fringes the Jordan and other rivers of the country. To this tree we venture to think, with Canon Tristram, the historian of the Books of Samuel and Chronicles makes reference ; and that through its quivering foliage the promised ' marching ' of the winds gave audible signal to the King of Israel and his soldiers, as they stood on the heights beyond the ' valley of the giants.' (See Josh. xv. 8.) In the plains of the Lebanon district, the trunks of poplars, and occasionally those of willow, are used for the rough beams which support the ponderous roofs of the houses. Myrtle (Heb. Din hadas). ' Instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree.' — Isaiah Iv. 13. This fragrant and beautiful shrub, though universally admired, has received but casual notice from the sacred writers ; yet these are sufficient to show that it was by ' Homer {Od. lib. vii. io6) compares the rapid fingers of the maids of Alkinous when plying their shuttles to the leaves of the tall poplar. TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 6^ no means overlooked among the vegetable products of Palestine. It is named but once in the historical books, when the returned Jews under Nehemiah (viii. 15) fetched branches of MYRTLE and other trees from the Mount of Olives for the construction of booths at the Feast of Tabernacles — a custom still observed by their countrymen. In Isaiah's glowing predictions of future prosperity it is promised that the myrtle shall be planted ' in the wilderness ; ' and again, that the myrtle shall replace the ' brier ' and the ' pine tree ' the ' thorn.' In the vision of Zechariah (i. 8, 10, 11) a grove of myrtle trees is represented in a ' dell,' apparently in the neigh bourhood of Jerusalem. And the myrtle appears once more in the name of Hadassah, the fair cousin of Mordecai, better known to us under her Persian title of Esther (ii. 7). Some botanists regard Persia as the native country of the myrtle, whence it spread through Western Asia and into the regions surrounding the Mediterranean. It is found wild in Europe as far north as Marseilles, and is cultivated in the warmer parts of our own land, into which it seems to have been brought in the reign of Queen Elizabeth — it is said by Raleigh and Sir F. Carew on their return from Spain. In the sunny South it grows to the dimensions of a tree, and few objects more delight the sense than groves of this classic plant. The Egyptians imported the myrtle for their gardens on the banks of the Nile, and, like the Greeks and Romans, wove wreaths of honour from its dark glossy foliage. Dedicated to the Goddess of Beauty, the myrtle was regarded by the ancients as the emblem of love and peace. Among the Hebrews this shrub, according to the Rabbins, symbolized justice ; but there is nothing in F 66 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. Scripture to support this. In Zechariah's vision the ' myrtle trees in the dell ¦" appear to denote the Jewish Church in its then secluded condition, yet beautiful and fragrant even in obscurity. It is doubtful if the ancient Hebrews employed the wood of the myrtle for the shafts of weapons, as we find the Romans did. The flowers and leaves are sold in the markets of Damascus and Jerusalem as perfumes ; the French distil from the blossom a volatile oil ; and the Italians extract a wine from the berries, while the buds, as in old Rome, are used as a spice. The fruit is eaten as a dessert in Cyprus at the present day. The myrtle is of frequent occurrence in Palestine, though chiefly in the northern parts and on the western coast. It grows on Carmel, and in the glens round Jerusalem, as in Nehemiah 's days ; also in the neigh bourhood of Hebron, and in the ravines of the trans- Jordanic hills. By the streams which issue from the ancient heritage of Reuben and Gad the myrtle flourishes in such luxuriance as to become ' almost a timber tree,' reaching a height of twenty or twenty-five feet, and with ' a trunk as thick as a man's girth.' Oak, Teil Tree, (R.V.) Terebinth (Heb. n^N elah, ^^ allah, n^N allon, b'K eT). ' He was strong as the oaks ; yet I destroyed his fruit from above.' — Amos ii. 9. We are accustomed to think of the oak as the special property of Englishmen, — associated with the worship of their Celric forefathers, and supplying the ' wooden walls ' which for long ages were the chief material defences of our island, beside contributing in innumerable ways to the arts of peace. But while we possess in our woods TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 67 and parks two species of OAK, Palestine owns no less than nine, beside almost as many varieties. This fact has been somewhat obscured by the hasty assumptions of some modern writers on Biblical topo graphy, who have maintained that the terebinth or tur pentine tree (Pistachia terebinthus), and not any kind of oak (Quercus), was that to which the Hebrews gave the names above specified — all expressive of strength, like the Latin robur, and as fitly applied to the forest oaks of Palestine. The error doubtless arose from an insufficient acquaintance with those districts which lie out of the beaten tracks of European tourists, and to forgetfulness of the ravages to which the central and southern high lands of the country have been subjected. At the re mote period when the land was colonized by Canaanite tribes, Western Palestine was probably as rich in oak forests as Eastern Palestine is still. Even now. Dr. Thomson, after many years' residence, remarks : ' Beside the vast groves at the north of Tabor and on Lebanon and Hermon, in Gilead and Bashan, think of the great forests extending thirty miles at least, along the hills west of Nazareth, over Carmel, and down south beyond CsEsarea Palsestina.' He adds : ' To maintain that the oak is not a striking or abundant tree in Palestine, is a piece of critical hardihood tough as the tree itself. There is no such thing in this country as a terebinth wood. . . . And, finally, the terebinth is deciduous, and therefore not a favourite shade-tree. It is very rarely planted in the courts of houses, or over tombs, or in the places of resort in villages. It is the beautiful evergreen oak that you find there.' Some oaks are evergreen, and others deciduous, shed ding their foliage in the ' fall,' as do our native species. F 3 68 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. This is an obvious distinction, and one which would be noticed even in an unscientific age. That such was the case with the ancient Hebrews we learn from two pas sages in the Book of Isaiah : ' Ye shall be as an oak (elah) whose leaf fadeth ;' ' As a teil tree^ (elah), and as an oak (allon), whose substance is in them when they cast their leaves ' (ch. i. 30 ; vi. 13). Following this natural classification, we find the evergreen oaks (called also ilexes and holm oaks) to be represented chiefly by the prickly evergreen or Kermes oak (Quercus coccifera), which is a native of the countries bordering the Medi terranean; the insect (coccus) from which it derives its specific name yielding the dye known as ' Turkey Red.' On the hills of Galilee and Carmel, Gilead and Bashan, it attains to magnificent proportions. The so-called 'Abraham's Oak' near Hebron is a splendid specimen of this species, twenty-two feet in circumference. And the oak of Libbeiya in the Lebanon measures thirty-seven feet in girth, and its branches cover an area whose cir cumference measured over ninety yards. The Arab name is Sindian. But the growth of these and other trees is prevented by their wholesale destruction, when young, for fuel. Another abundant species is the Valonia or prickly- cupped oak (Q. xgilops), well known in the Levant, where its acorns are used in tanning, but the Arabs eat them for food. It is most common in the north and on the hills beyond Jordan, where it predominates over the evergreen species. This seems to be the ' oak (allon) of Bashan,' and, as we have seen, may be the 'cypress' of Isaiah xliv. 14. ' Teil is an old name for the lime tree {Tilid). ' Abraham's oak. TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 71 There are three other deciduous oaks, less common and conspicuous, in Palestine; the Oriental gall oak (Q. infectoria), which is comparatively small ; and the Turkey oak (Q. cerris), and our own sessile-cupped variety (Q. sessiliflord), which are found high up on Lebanon. The Arab name for oaks is ballAt — the distinction between evergreen and deciduous kinds being apparently recog nized. It may be remarked that the common holm oak of Europe (Q. ilex) is rare in Syria. Entering Palestine from the east, the Hebrew invaders could not have failed to be struck with the splendid forest vegetation of Bashan and Gilead, especially after the stunted vegetation of the desert, and even in con trast to the palms and sycomore-fig trees of Egypt. It was natural that the oak should become to them the symbol of ' strength,' and receive names conveying that meaning. Probably it was by modifications of the ori ginal root-word that the evergreen and the deciduous kinds were distinguished, the less important species of each being included with the leading representatives. And among the deciduous oaks they appear to have comprised the TEREBINTH, or turpentine tree (Pistachia terebinthus'^), because of its strong resemblance to them in outward appearance and habit, and because in the south and south-eastern part of Canaan the terebinths become numerous (though not forming woods or forests), and in Moab and Ammon, according to recent travellers, appear to replace the more hardy tree, for which the cHmate becomes too warm and too dry. After a close examination of the various words above enumerated, it seems impossible to determine with cer- 1 According to Boissier, the large terebinth of the Holy Land is an allied species, P. palsestina. 72 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. tainty any verbal distinction between the oak and the terebinth, beyond perhaps this, that allon is never applied to the terebinth ; in accordance with which view we find that the same word is always used for oak woods and forests ^. Moreover, when, as in Isaiah vi. 1 3 and Hosea iv. 13, allon and elah are distinguished, allon appears to be the oak, while elah (translated ' teil tree ' and ' elms ' in A.V.) may be oak or terebinth. Since, how ever, allon is the word used to denote oaks in the plural, it must include both evergreen and deciduous species ; for both the Kermes and Valonia oaks formed and still form woods and forests in Palestine. The ordinary reader of the Old Testament may, there fore, come to conclusions as reliable as those of the phi lologist, by considering the context of each allusion. The following hints may be serviceable : — I. Where the plural is used, and always where grove, wood, or forest is implied, true oaks are to be under stood. 3. References to idolatrous ceremonies under the shadow of ' oaks ' suggest the same conclusion, especially when ' hill-tops ' and ' mountains ' are specified. 3. Individual trees mentioned as landmarks may be oaks or terebinths, but the latter mainly in the warmer parts of Palestine. (Among such references oak is mistranslated ' plane ' in some eight or nine cases; in all these passages the Revised Version gives the correction, in text or margin.) 4. The terebinth does not appear to have been applied to any economic purpose by the ancient Hebrews ; ' The apparent exceptions are Isaiah i. 29 ; Ixi. 3 ; Ezek. xxxi. 14 ; in which the word is D''?'« {elim, ' strong ones ') ; it is doubtfiil, however, if specific trees are intended, at least in the two latter passages. TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 73 though the turpentine is extracted from it by incisions in the bark at the present day. The direct references to the oak, including all the terms cited, are not very numerous, but we must mentally in clude such trees in the ' forests ' and ' woods ' so fre quently mentioned. That they Fere deemed not un worthy of comparison with the cedars of Lebanon we gather from such poetical allusions as Isaiah ii. 13 ; Amos ii. 9, etc. That the timber was valued we may infer from its being used in the manufacture of idols (Isaiah xliv. 14) ; while the prophet Ezekiel states (ch. xxvii. 6) that the oak-trunks of Bashan supplied oars for the Syrian galleys ; it is fair therefore to conclude that the Jews utilized so durable a material in other ways. It is probable that by the 'tree planted by the waters ' of Psalm i. 3 and Jer. xvii. 8 an evergreen oak may be implied ; and the same may be said of the ' great tree ' seen in vision by Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. iv. 10-13), to whom the oak was probably a familiar object in his gardens at Babylon. Of the present and past distribution of oaks in Palestine enough has already been said. It has been also in timated that the terebinth is common in the south and south-eastern districts, but chiefly as isolated trees, some of great size and age, not unlike deciduous oaks, and like them probably forming well-known landmarks. Thus we have the ' oak ' or ' terebinth ' of Shechem, Mamre, Moreh, Jabesh, Zaanaim, Tabor, and others — a custom evident enough in the topography of our own country. This tree is marked by a thick trunk and stout spreading branches ; and its inconspicuous flowers are followed by oval berries, not unlike unripe grapes. It is once men tioned in the apocryphal Book of Ecclesiasticus (xxiv. 16): 74 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 'As the turpentine tr^e I stretched out my branches, and my branches are the branches of honour and grace.' A smaller species, the Lentisk or mastick tree (P- lentiscus), is once mentioned by the latter name in the Book of Susannah (ver. 54). It is a shrub well known in Italy and Greece as yielding the ' mastic ' of commerce. In Palestine it forms wild undergrowths in the less frequented parts of the country ; and with the Christ's Thorn (Zizyphus spina Christi) constitutes the lowest belt of jungle on the eastern bank of the Lake of Galilee. This ' thorn ' may be the one alluded to in Isaiah vii. 19, Iv. 13, as it is specially a plant of the Ghor and the Desert ; but amidst the multitude of thorny shrubs now found in and around the Land of Promise, the identification of a particular one must be conjectural, as before remarked, except where the Hebrew and Arabic names appear to be specific and synonymous. Oil Tree (Heb. t??' }*?? ets shemen). ' I will plant in the wilderness . . . the oil tree ' (R. V. marg. oleaster). — Isaiah xli. 19. Although, as we shall see hereafter, the olive was the chief and almost the only source of the oil mentioned in Scripture, another ' oil tree ' is mentioned in three several books of the Old Testament, though the Author ized Version gives an inaccurate rendering in two cases, and in one of these the Revisers have been equally mis leading. The passage cited above is correctly translated, ' I will plant in the wilderness [probably the scene of the Israelite wanderings is intended] the cedar . . and the oil tree ' (lit. ' tree of oil'). The same words are used in i Kings vi. 23, &c., to TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 75 denote the wood of which the symbolic figures of cherubim in Solomon's temple were made. Yet they are rendered ' olive tree ' and ' olive wood ' in both English Versions. That this is an error is manifest from the remaining reference, where we read in the Book of Nehemiah (viii. 15) that the returned Jews fetched ' olive ' branches and ' pine ' branches — ' pine ' being a mistranslation of tP^ fj' ets shemen, in deference to the Septuagint, which has ' cypress.' All these allusions appear to point to the OLEASTER (Eleagnus angustifolius), sometimes erroneously termed the 'wild oHve.' (So the R.V. renders Neh. viii. 15.) It has no botanical affinity with the latter, but it yields an inferior kind of oil, used as a medicament, though unfit for food. The oleaster is a small tree common in all parts of Palestine except the Jordan valley. The wood is hard and fine-grained, and hence would have been suited for the carving of images. The leaves are small and narrow, and the flowers inconspicuous ; yet the oleaster is a graceful shrub. An allied species (E. hortensis) is cultivated in this country for its elegance of form as well as for the fragrance of its blossoms. Poplar (Heb. njll? Ubnefi). ' And Jacob took him rods of green (R. V. ' fresh ') poplar.'— Gen. xxx. 37. The word translated ' poplar ' in the above passage, and in Hosea iv. 13, where the prophet is rebuking idolaters who 'burn incense upon the hills under oaks and poplars' is derived from a root I?K signifying 'to be white,' the same from which Lebanon ('the white mountain ') derived its name. The White Poplar (Populus alba), familiar in our own 76 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. country and common in Palestine and the South of Europe, may at least be regarded as uniting the con ditions of these passages. It is a tree of the water-side, and yet grows high up on the hills ; and the whiteness of the back of the leaves imparts a striking paleness of hue which led the Greek botanists to call it kiVK-q or ' white.' The groves of white poplar were regarded as sacred to Hercules^. This species is planted in Damascus for its shade, and it is probable that Jacob would have met with it in Padan-aram. The wood is soft and spongy, but is utilized by modern artificers for bowls, plates, &c. We have, how ever, no information as to its use by the Hebrews. Shittah Tree, Shittim Wood (Heb. naE* shittaJi). ' They shall make an ark of shittim wood.' — Exod. xxv. lo. ' I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah tree (R. V. ' the acacia').' — Isaiah xli. 19. The Old Testament references to the kind of timber called ' shittim wood ' are confined to the Books of Exodus and Deuteronomy, from which we learn that it was the chief material employed in the construction of the framework and furniture of the Tabernacle. The word also appears as the proper name of a district or grassy plain (Abel) north-east of the Dead Sea (Numb. xxv. I ; xxxiii. 49 ; Josh. ii. i ; Joel iii. 18). Some tree is therefore denoted which grew in the Desert and in the Ghor, and was large enough to furnish boards of considerable size, and, we may infer, of re markable durability. One would also judge from the ' Virgil, Eel. vii. 6i- TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 77 complete (or almost complete) absence of later references that the tree was not a native of Palestine generally. These requirements are fully met by the Oriental ACACIAS of Sinai and the southern part of the Jordan valley. Two species in particular are of importance for size and value, A. nilotica and A. seyal. The former is an Egyptian tree locally called sunf^, the latter is called seyal, and yields the gum-arabic of commerce. This tree, the larger of the two, has a rugged and thorny stem, and bears yellow blossoms amidst its feathery foliage ; the fruit is not unlike a lupin. It has straggled northward up the Jordan valley, but its chief home is in the wadys or ravines further south, and in the ' waste howling wilderness' of Sinai. The wood is hard and durable, and admirably adapted for cabinet - work. Mummy coffins of sycamore were clamped with acacia by the Egyptians. It would be the extreme of scepticism to deny that one at least of the Desert acacias supplied in the wil derness the timber of the sacred tent. There they still flourish ; and gnarled specimens of great age still stud the moist meadows beside the Jordan, where, under the shadow of acacia groves, the ' Israelitish tribes ' en camped at the end of their wanderings. But, satisfactorily as the acacia answers to the shittim wood of Scripture, the same cannot be said of it with reference to the prophetic promise in Isaiah xli. 19, already dwelt upon under previous headings. It is there predicted that the cedar, the myrtle, and the oleaster, together with the shittah tree, should be planted in the wilderness. The general meaning is obvious enough — that the trees of rich ' Canon Tristram suggests, with fair probability, that the ' burning bush ' (Heb. nJD seneh) may have been the sunt {A. nilotica). 78 TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. and fertile soils should be made to grow in the dry and sterile waste. But with what force could this be affirmed of a tree which is one of the commonest objects in the wilderness.'' The force of the figure is weakened by its introduction into the picture. Possibly it was from a sense of this incongruity that the Septuagint reads ' box ' in this clause instead of the following one. Gram matically ' shittah ' and ' shittim ' appear identical, but the context of the passage just quoted seems imperatively to demand a tree which, like the others here enumerated, is unknown in the Desert. It is safest, perhaps, to leave the name untranslated. Thyine Wood (Gk. ^iXov Bvivov). ' Merchandise of gold, and silver . . and all thyine wood.' — Rev. xviii. 12. In one of the closing chapters of the Apocalypse it is prophesied that amongst the judgments destined to fall on the mystical Babylon, the merchants of the earth shall lament for the loss of their trade in the precious metals and ' thyine wood,' a literal translation of the Greek ^\ov 6vCvov. The reference seems to be to a wood of the most beautiful and costly nature, known to the Romans under the name of citrus, though bearing no relation to the citron family. It was yielded by a tree growing in the north of Africa, and known to botanists as Callitris quadrivalvis ^ — a coniferous tree closely allied to the better-known arbor vitse. The wood was in request for furniture, especially tables, from its colour and fragrance ; and the most fabulous prices are recorded as having been given for such articles. Horace proposes to use the wood for beams in a temple to Venus ^ ; ' The older botanical name was Thuja articulata. " Horace, Carm. lib. iv. od. 1. TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 79 Vitruvius says that a ' citron table ' was worth more than its weight in gold ; and both Homer and Pliny speak of the use of thyine wood for sacrifices to the gods. The name is probably from dveiv, to sacrifice. Some years since, specimens of cabinet-work made from the Callitris were exhibited in Paris, and attracted much attention. A plank of the same material is said to be in the possession of the Royal Horticultural Society, and samples of the wood are preserved in the museum at Kew. The Turks regard the wood as indestructible, and employ it in their sacred edifices. It is now obtained from the province of Algeria. Willow (Heb. ^IJJ ereb, nas^V tsaphtsaphah). ' They shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the watercourses.' — Isaiah xliv. 4. Several species of this well-known tree occur in Palestine, abounding beside the rivers and winter torrents of the country, conspicuously so on the banks of the Jordan and its eastern tributaries, the Arnon and Callirhoe. Lamartine speaks of 'forests of willows of every species ' fringing the Jordan, but he probably in cludes poplars and other moisture-loving plants. WIL LOWS flourish in the glens bordering the Dead Sea, where the rocks are tapestried by the equally moisture-loving maidenhair fern. Though not so abundant as in our own humid chmate and soil, in which the multiplicity of its forms makes the genus Salix a puzzle to botanists, the willow must have been a noticeable plant in Bible days. It first appears as one of the trees from which boughs were to be fetched for the construction of booths at the annual Feast of Tabernacles (Lev. xxiii. 40). Here and in other passages 8o TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. the phrase ' willows of the brook ' occurs. In the Book of Job (ch. xl. 23) the hippopotamus is described as couching under ' the willows of the brook.' In the mag nificent description given by the prophet Isaiah (ch. xv) the defeated Moabites are depicted as carrying away their possessions to ' the brook of the willows' for refuge : and in the promise quoted at the head of this section, the godly seed of Jacob are to ' spring up ' with the vigorous life of the richly-nourished willows beside the ' overflow ing streams.' Of the multitudinous uses to which the willows, sallows, and osiers, in their various kinds, have been or are applied in our own islands, the history of the Hebrew nation affords no trace, except in connexion Vi'ith the autumnal festival ; we may, however, safely infer that the pliability of some species in particular may have led to their employment for wicker-work — a property recognized by nations so far apart as our Celtic fore fathers and the peasantry of ancient Rome. The passage usually recalled when ' willows ' are men tioned is that in Psalm cxxxvii. 2, so often paraphrased in mournful verse. It has been generally believed that the weeping willow, named Salix Babylonica by Linnaeus, was the veritable plant on which the captive Israelites are pathetically said to have ' hung their harps ' in the land of their exile. It has also been stated that this species, now so common in England, was originally intro duced by Lady Suffolk, the contemporary of Alexander Pope. The poet, it is said, was present at the uncovering of the consignment, and observing some signs of life in the branches, proposed to plant them in his garden at Twickenham. There the weeping willow rooted and grew, and became the parent of a numerous race. It TIMBER AND FOREST TREES AND SHRUBS. 8 1 seems, however, that the particular willow planted by Pope, and, until a comparatively recent period, to be seen in the grounds which once he owned, was not the first of its kind introduced into this country. It is also doubtful whether 5. Babylojtica is a native of the land whose name it bears ; but in any case the poplars and willows of the Euphrates would remind the exiled Hebrews of similar plants beside their native streams, and would be called by the same general name. The second word (tsaphtsaphah), used in the Old Testament for the willow, occurs but once, in Ezekiel's parable of the planted vine, which was set beside many waters ' as a willow-tree ' (ch. xvii. 5). There can be little doubt of the identification ; as, beside agreeing with the context, the term almost coincides with safsaf the modern Arabic name for willow. CHAPTER III. FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. Palestine, with its varieties of climate and its fertile soil, was and is well adapted for the cultivation of a corresponding variety of edible fruits. At the present time this is actually the case, notwithstanding the insecure and depopulated state of the country; but in Old Testament times the species of fruit-bearing trees known to the Hebrews seem to have scarcely reached a dozen. Several useful kinds, as the apple and pear, plum, orange, and peach, have been introduced at a comparatively modern date ; but the abundance and excellence of the primitive produce more than com pensated for its lack of variety. It was peculiarly ' a land of vines and fig trees,' of ' pomegranates and oil-olive,' and these were inferior to none of their kind ; while there were others of secondary importance, such as the carob-tree and the pistachia, which, beside the common fig, were deemed worthy of being imported from the province of Syria into Italy ^. Of ' herbs ' and ' vegetables,' in the common accepta tion of those terms, we shall have to speak in a succeeding chapter. ' Dr. Daubeny {Roman Husbandry) considers that but few kinds of fruit were known to the ancients. The olive and the vine are supposed to have reached Italy through Greece ; and the damson was brought from Damascus, as its name implies. EGYPTIAN VEGETATION. FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. 85 The Israelites would naturally have brought from Egypt some knowledge of horticulture ; and when settled in their own land, we have sufficient hints in the Old Testament writings for concluding that gardens and orchards were by no means unusual among them. The picture of ' a watered garden ' was a very common one on the banks of the Nile, where irrigation was easy, and where lakes and canals were readily constructed and maintained in a state of repair. The gardens of the wealthier Egyptians were usually divided into sections, palm and sycomore-fig trees forming the ' orchard,' apart from the trellised vines and from the ' flower ' and 'kitchen' plots. Solomon, perhaps for the gratification of his Egyptian bride, laid out ' gardens and orchards,' in which he ' planted trees of all kind of fruits ' (Eccles. ii. 5) ; and in the ' Song ' ascribed to him (ch. iv. 12, 13; vi. 11), a picturesque description is given of ' a garden enclosed,' watered by springs, and planted with ' nuts,' ' pomegranates,' and other ' pleasant fruits.' And although such parterres are most frequently spoken of in connexion with royal palaces (3 Kings xxi. 18; xxv. 4; Neh. iii. 15, &c-), yet other references clearly point to the possession of gardens and orchards by private individuals, distinct from those more public plantations which may then have surrounded the towns or villages of Palestine as they do at the present day (cf. Isaiah Iviii. 11 ; Jer. xxix. 5 ; xxxi. 13 ; Amos iv. 9 ; ix. 14, &c.). In Cyprus — a truly Oriental island — even the poorer class of house has its garden of orange, lemon, mulberry, and pomegranate. ' Summer fruits,' to which a special name (ri? kayits) was applied, are mentioned several times, and, as in Jer. xlviii. 32, are distinguished from the vintage, which 86 FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. was an autumnal produce. These two comprise the productions now to be enumerated. The practice of interment in gardens usually recalls the incidents of our Lord's burial and resurrection — the garden of Joseph of Arimathaea, and the ' gardener ' to whose charge it seems to have been entrusted. But the custom, though well known to the Greeks and Romans, was evidently of much earlier date in Palestine, as appears from the mention of the burial-places of Manasseh and Amon, and, as it would seem, of Samuel and Joab also (2 Kings xxi. 18, 36; i Sam. xxv. i ; I Kings ii. 34). Idolatrous observances, probably con nected with social festivities, • took place in gardens during the moral decline of the Hebrew commonwealth, and were sternly denounced by the prophet Isaiah (i. 29 ; Ixv. 3 ; Ixvi. 17). Modern travellers speak with enthusiastic admiration of the results of the diligent cultivation of fruit-trees in Palestine at the present day. Amidst the valleys and plains of the Lebanon district ; in the warm coast-plain, at Jaffa, Ascalon, and Gaza ; in the secluded vale of Shechem ; in sheltered nooks amidst the hills that are round Jerusalem ; in the once-famed Gardens of Solomon in the Wady Urtas, near Bethlehem ; and in other spots too numerous to particularize, the beauty and fragrance, the excellence and productiveness of orchards, vineyards, and olive-groves proclaim in the silent eloquence of nature what the goodly land was in the days of her prosperity, and what, under a wise and equitable rule, she might yet again become. Of Syria Mr. Farley writes : — ' The gardens are filled with the orange and the citron. Aleppo sends the far- famed pistachio to market, Jaffa produces the delicious FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. 87 water-melon ; at Damascus there are plums, cherries, peaches of the finest kinds ; and, above all, the apricot. In short, there is everything here to satisfy our material wants, to soothe the senses, and charm the imagination ^.' Almond (Heb. fi>^ shaked). ' I see a rod of an almond tree.' — Jer. i. 11 . The Rosaceous order of plants, found in most parts of the world, but chiefly in the temperate regions of the Northern hemisphere, is rich in plants remarkable alike for beauty and utility. The roses of our hedgerows and flower-gardens, and the fruit-bearing trees in our orchards, are so closely allied as to be grouped in one family, as may easily be perceived by comparing the blossom of a wild rose with that of a cherry, apple, or plum tree. In Palestine the true roses are restricted to the northern mountains, where three or four species have been observed, but the entire order is represented by nearly sixty species. Among these are two fruit-bearing trees, of which the Almond (Amygdalus) first claims a brief notice. This beautiful tree is too well known to need detailed description, being a frequent ornament of our English gardens. The Hebrew name is peculiarly expressive, being derived from a verb ^|'?^ (shakad), signifying ' to watch for,' and hence ' to make haste.' Thus, in the vision of Jeremiah (i. 11), the prophet is shown ' a rod of an almond tree,' to signify that Jehovah ' will hasten ' His ' word to perform it.' The symbol was ' Two Years in Syria. 88 FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. a peculiarly expressive one, for early as the tree is to put forth its pinkish-white flowers in this country, it is in full bloom in Palestine in the month of January, and the fruit appears in March or April. The almond is still cultivated in Syria, and grows wild on the northern and eastern hills. Four species have been enumerated ; but it was doubtless much more abundant in ancient times. Almond blossoms formed the pattern of the ' bowls ' of the golden candlestick of the tabernacle (Exod. xxv. 33, &c.), and Aaron's rod was from the same tree (Numb. xvii. 8). As almonds were reckoned among ' the best fruits of the land ' in the time of Jacob, and were sent by him to propitiate his unknown son in Egypt (Gen. xliii. 11), we may infer that they were not then cultivated in the latter country. Pliny, however, mentions the almond among Egyptian fruit-trees ; and it is not improbable that it was introduced between the days of Jacob and the period of the Exodus. In connexion with the earlier 1 history of the same patriarch, we read that Jacob 'took rods of hazel' (Gen. xxx. 37). The word here used is t'? (luz), which the Revisers, following the Rabbinigal authorities and the analogy of the Arabic name, translate 'almond tree.' If this be correct, the ancient city of Bethel, which ' was called Luz at the first' (Gen. xkviii. 19), may have gained its original name from sonae conspicuous indi vidual of this species. The beautiful symbol of old age in Eccles. xii. 5, 'the almond tree shall flourish,' is doubtless based on the snowy whiteness of its aspect when viewed from a distance ; perhaps also, as Mr. Carruthers has suggested, with a reference to the still bare br^mches, resembling the FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. 89 withered limbs of the aged man, bending beneath a hoary head. So Moore has sung of ' . . . the silvery almond-flower That blooms on a leafless bough.' The almond no longer reaches us from Palestine ; the ' Jordan almonds ' of commerce being grown in Malaga, and large quantities being exported from Spain. Apple (Heb. WSIil tappuach). ' And the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered.' — Joel i. 1 2. The ' apple' of Scripture, like the classical fruits of the Hesperides, has proved a source of much debate, if not actually an ' apple of discord.' The orange, citron, and quince have been proposed, as well as the more homely rendering in our English Version, — the Revisers in this case following their predecessors. It is advisable to look first at the requirements of Scripture itself. The apple tree and its fruit are mentioned six times in the Old Testament, but are not referred to in either the New Testament or the Apocryphal writings. Of the above six references, four are in Solomon's Song, one in the Book of Proverbs, and one in the prophecy of Joel. From the first group we learn that the tree was noted for its beauty, that its foliage afforded a grateful shade, and that its fruit was sweet and reviving (Song ii. 3, 5 ; vii. 8 ; viii. 5). In Proverbs xxv. 11, ' apples of gold in baskets, or filigree-work ' (R. V.), are likened to ' a word fitly spoken;' and the prophet Joel (i. 13) bewails the withering of this among the other choicest trees of Canaan. In favour of the common interpretation. Dr. Thomson, as a long resident at Beirut, is entitled to be heard with 90 FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. the utmost respect. He says of the once renowned Philistine city of Askelon: ' Now the whole area is planted over with orchards of the various kinds of fruit which flourish on this coast. It is especially celebrated for its apples, which are the largest and best I have ever seen in this country. When I was here in June, quite a caravan started for Jerusalem loaded with them, and they would not have disgraced even an American orchard.' Advert ing to the claims of the citron, he adds : ' Citrons are very large, weighing several pounds each, and are so hard and indigestible that they cannot be used except when made into preserves. The tree is small, slender, and must be propped up, or the fruit will bend it down to the ground. Nobody ever thinks of " sitting under" its '' shadow," for it is too small and straggling to make a shade.' Such a criticism as this demolishes the claims of the citron ; and the fruit of the quince is open to the same objection. The orange, also, seems to be an importa tion of modern times. But it is hardly so certain that the apple does, as Dr. Thomson goes on to maintain, ' meet all the demands of the Biblical allusions as to smell and colour.' Like the rest of the group to which it belongs, it affords a truly beautiful sight when laden with its early blossoms ; yet ' apples of gold ' seem to imply a deeper colour than that of even a ' golden pippin ' ^ ; and to perfume-loving Orientals, the odour of the apple would, in the writer's opinion, be deemed feeble and inoperative. Dr. Tristram has vigorously pleaded the claims of the Apricot (Armeniaca vulgaris) to be the apple of ' Virgil, it is true, speaks oi aurea mala, 'golden apples' {Eclog. iii. 71), but also {Eclog. ii. 51) of mala (plums?) 'hoary with soft down.' The corresponding Arabic term is also somewhat general. FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. 9 1 Scripture. As its name implies, it is thought to have been imported from Armenia into Western Asia and the South of Europe. Like the vine, it is not indigenous to Palestine, but has been cultivated and naturalized from very early times. Of the apple he obsei-ves, ' though cultivated with success in the higher parts of Lebanon, yet it barely exists in the country itself. There are, indeed, a few trees in the gardens of Jaffa, but they do not thrive, and have a wretched, woody fruit. The climate is far too hot for our apple-tree.' On the other hand, he says of the apricot : ' Perhaps it is, with the single exception of the fig, the most abundant fruit of the country. In highlands and lowlands alike, by the shores of the Mediterranean and on the banks of the Jordan, in the north of Judsea, under the heights of Lebanon, in the recesses of Galilee, and in the glades of Gilead, the apricot flourishes, and yields a crop of prodigious abundance. Many times have we pitched our tents in its shade, and spread our carpets secure from the rays of the sun. . . . There can scarcely be a more deliciously perfumed fruit than the apricot, and what can better fit the epithet of Solomon ... as its branches bend under the weight, in their setting of bright, yet pale foliage ? ' This view has been adopted by other writers. A correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, writing from the island of Cyprus, gave the following additional particulars : — ' It will, I think, be a subject of interest to know that the identification of the fruit which in the Old Testament and in ancient Greek writings is called the " golden apple " has become possible. The three golden apples given by Venus to Milanion, whereby he won the race with Atalanta were plucked, it is said, either from the 93 FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. garden of the Hesperides or from an orchard in Cyprus. Any proof helping to establish the identification of this fruit will come naturally with greater weight from Cyprus, the home of Aphrodite. In Cyprus at the present day, in early summer, almost every garden has trees laden with TO, xpiJ(r6iji,TiXa, " golden apples," and the bazaars of the towns are filled with the fragrant fruit. The modern Greek name for apricot is ro ^^pvkokkov, but the Cypriote still calls it by the ancient name ro xpvv,-'--j FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. 97 still to the Romans, the land was typified on coins by the figure of a palm tree ; and the city of Tadmor or Palmyra is supposed to have been so named for a similar reason. The date palm, both in its wild and cultivated condition, has been so often figured and described that the chief points relating to its structure, appearance and habits may be considered as well known even to the general reader. A visit to the Botanical Gardens at Kew will give a more accurate and impressive conception of the beauty and variety of the Palmacex than either verbal or pictorial description. The practical uses of the date palm to the Arabs and other inhabitants of the regions in which it grows are almost innumerable. Not only is the fruit eaten raw or made into a conserve, but the young leaves, the soft interior of the immature stem, and the stamen-bearing flowers, are made available for food ; while the sap is drunk as milk, and a spirituous beverage is distilled from it. The timber is valued for its durability, and the fibres of the leaves are converted into mats and baskets, sails and cordage. Even the hard kernels of the date are soaked in water and then ground up as food for camels^. Turning now to the Scripture references to the date later; for Ssewulf (A.D. 1102) found them still flourishing. The process of decay or destruction must have commenced soon after (not a little facilitated probably by the Crusades); for Sir John Maundeville (A.D. 1322), whose love of the marvellous would not have suffered him to be silent respecting them, if still existing, merely says of Jericho, " it is now destroyed, and is but a little village." Exactly 400 years later, Dr. Shaw (1722) tells us ' ' there are several " • palm trees at Jfricho. Time and neglect, however, were slowly but surely doing their work. In 1838 Dr. Robinson found " only one solitary palm tree lingering in all the plain;" and even "of this" (writes Dr. Macgowan in 1847) " nothing remains except the mutilated trunk, stripped of its crown of leaves." ' ^ The Arabs declare that the palm tree has as many uses as there are days in the year. H 98 FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. palm, we find that it was formerly, as it is now in the East, the embodiment of grace and beauty, as the cedar was of strength and grandeur. Its lofty stature is referred to in the Song of Solomon vii. 7, and Jer. x. 5 ; its verdure and fruitfulness, even to old age, in Psalm xcii. 12, 14. In Joel i. 12 it is spoken of among the most precious of fruit- bearing trees, while its beauty seems to have rendered it a favourite object of artistic design. It was freely intro duced into the carved work of Solomon's Temple, and appears among the ornaments of the mystic edifice seen in vision by the prophet Ezekiel (i Kings vi. 29 ; vii. ^6 ; Ezek. xl. 26, 37, &c.)^ Ecclesiastically, the palm leaf was first used at the annual Feast of Tabernacles (Lev. xxiii. 40), and after the settlement of the Hebrews in Palestine these leaves were obtained from the Mount of Olives (Neh. viii. 15) ; and that the tree grew among the southern hills we learn from the mention of ' the palm tree of Deborah, between Ramah and Bethel, in Mount Ephraim ' (Judg. iv. 5). The entry of our Lord into Jerusalem was signalized by the strewing of palm leaves in His triumphal path (John xii. 13), and the Romish Church annually commemorates the event, large numbers of palm trees being cultivated in Italy, Spain, and the south of France for the cere monial on Palm Sunday. The long pinnated or winged leaves, reaching a length of twelve feet or more, form a striking crown to the tall and graceful stem of the cultivated palm ; in the wild state the withered remains of each circlet of leaves adhere to the trunk, giving it a rugged appearance. In Jewish, Classic, and Christian symbolism, the palm ' The palm appears also in the few relics of Jewish art which have been discovered in recent times. FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. 99 leaf is the emblem of victory (Rev. vii. 9), and it occurs as a frequent and expressive sign above the resting- places of the persecuted believers who lived and died in the subterranean catacombs of Rome. The oases of Elim in the wilderness of the wanderings (Exod. XV. 27) derived its name from the ' trees ' (D?'?< elim), which we know to have been date palms. It is possible that Elath or Eloth, a port in the Gulf of Akabah (2 Kings xiv. 22, Szic), may have been so called from a similar grove, as palms are still found in that locality. Among the fruit-trees cultivated by the ancient Egyptians, ' palms,' says Sir G. Wilkinson, ' held the first rank, as well from their abundance as from their great utility. The fruit constituted a principal part of their food, both in the month of August, when it was gathered fresh from the trees, and at other seasons of the year, when it was used in a preserved state.' Palm wine, used in embalming, was probably made by tapping the tree, as now, and its wood and fibres were used in various ways for beams, tables, cordage, mats, baskets, brushes, ropes, and even toy-balls for children. The timber of the palms, however, is not adapted for the purposes of the carpenter or cabinet-maker, the wood being hardest at the outside and softest at the heart — a characteristic of that great division of plants which have straight-veined leaves. Sonnini, in his Travels in Egypt, describes ' a forest of palms and fruit trees ' round Dendera, and ' a district covered with date trees ' near Djebel-el-Zeer in Upper Egypt. He also mentions a spirit extracted from dates. The dates of Babylon were celebrated in ancient times for their especial excellence, and were reserved only for H 2 ICO FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. royal use^- Pliny mentions many varieties of this valued fruit, and Arab writers declare that there were three hundred names for the tree— an Oriental hyperbole corresponding to the statement above-quoted as to its practical applications. Fig Tree (Heb. '^^^f!^ leenaK). ' Now learn a parable of the fg tree.' — Matt. xxiv. 32. Our translators were on fairly secure ground when dealing with the chief fruit-trees mentioned in the Bible ; and there is no uncertainty as to the identification of such vegetable princes as the Palm, the Olive, and the Fig Tree. From the frequent and varied references to the last-named tree we might safely infer its wide distribution and striking abundance in former times ; but even now ' it grows wild in fissures of the rocks from Lebanon to the south of the Dead Sea,' and is cultivated in every available spot. From the source of the Jordan to the Judean hills, and from Moab to the shores of the Mediterranean, it spreads forth its broad and glossy foliage in vineyards, or among mulberries and pome granates ; and men, as of old, sit beneath its grateful shade. Or it grows green by the wayside, as when an unfruitful fig tree was made by the Great Teacher an affecting emblem of an unbelieving people. A fine grove occurs in the Wady et Tin, or ' Valley of Figs,' near the site of the ancient Bethel. ^ ' The art of cultivating [the date-palm] was first discovered and practised, according to Ritter, by the Nabatheans of Babylonia in the plains bordering the Lower Euphrates and Tigris. In that region forests of fruit-bearing palms stretched continuously for miles; there the tree almost sufficed for the necessities of life. From this region the cultivated date-palm spread to Jericho, Phoenicia, the jElanitic Gulf in the Red Sea, and elsewhere.' (Hehn, Wanderings of Plants and Animals, p. 203.) The palm appears on the Assyrian monuments ; and, according to Strabo, was the chief timber tree of Babylonia (Rawlinson). FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. 103 The common fig (Ficus carica) belongs to a genus of plants which comprises many remarkable members of the vegetable kingdom ; such as the banyan, the peepul or sacred fig of India, the india-rubber tree, and the Australian fig. Most of the true figs secrete a milky juice, which is usually acid, and in some species highly poisonous. In the edible kinds the objectionable qualities are removed by cooking. The order ( Urticacex) includes the elm and the mul berry, as well as herbaceous plants like the hemp and nettle. In Palestine, the figs are represented only by the sycomore-fig (described on pp. 1 21-124) and the edible fig of commerce. This species has a wide geographical range, extending from the south of Europe to the north of India ; growing also in Northern Africa, where it has been known and valued from time immemorial, as the m.onuments of Egypt conclusively show. The Biblical references to this tree commence with the garden of Eden, and end with the visions of the Apocalypse. Nearly all of them, however, illustrate either the frequency of its occurrence throughout Palestine, the value of its shade, or the importance and excellence of its fruit. The spies sent through the country by the order of Moses brought back samples of grapes, pomegranates, and figs, as characteristic productions ; and these are again enumerated in the promise of Canaan (Numb. xiii. 23 ; Deut. viii. 8). In Jotham's parable of the trees, the olive, fig, and vine are selected as representatives (Judg. ix. 8-13). Prophets foretell their destruction, and lament the desolation when accomplished. Thus Jeremiah : 'They (the Babylonians) shall eat up thy vines and thy fig trees' (ch. v. 17); 104 FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. ' There shall be no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree ' (ch. viii. 13). Hosea : ' I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, and I will make them a forest' (ch. ii. 12). Joel : ' He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree ; ' ' The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth ' (ch. i. 7, 13). But in promises of pardon and restored prosperity the fig and other trees are to ' yield their strength' (Joel ii. 22) ; and, as in Solomon's halcyon reign (i Kings iv. 35), every man is to ' sit under his vine and fig tree ' (Micah iv. 4 ; Zech. iii. 10). For disobedience the locusts had attacked the olive-yards and vine-yards, and gnawed the fig trees ; but with repentance and reformation, vegetable life was to be renewed (Joel i. 4 ; ii. 35 ; Amos iv. 9 ; Haggai ii. 17, 19). Yet amidst all vicissitudes in external nature, he who has faith in God will rejoice in Him, ' though the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vine ' (Habak. iii. 17). In a vision of ' two baskets of figs,' recorded by Jeremiah, the captives of Judah are typified by the better sample of the fruit (ch. xxiv. 1-7) ; but the emblem is more specially used by our Lord, in whose teaching the barren fig tree points directly to the Jewish nation (Luke xiii. 6 ; Mark xi. 13, &c.). In the Gospel narrative we also find such incidental references as the single fig trees at Bethany and Cana, and the village of ' Bethphage,' signifying ' house of green figs ' (Luke xix. 29 ; John i. 50 ; Matt. xxi. 19). We find also Scripture allusions to ' green ' or unripe figs, and to the ' first-ripe ' figs of the early summer (Song Sol. ii. 13 ; Jer. xxiv. 2), both of which were easily shaken from the tree (Nahum iii. 12; Rev. vi. 13). The first-ripe fig was esteemed a delicacy, as we may infer from the Revised Version of FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. I05 Isaiah xxviii. 4 : ' as the first-ripe fig before the summer, which when he that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up.' As a matter of fact, the fig tree, under favourable conditions, bears as many as three crops of fruit in the year: viz., the Early, appearing about March or April, and ripening in June ; the Stimmer, appearing in June, and ripening in August ; and the Winter, appearing in August, but ripening after the fall of the leaf. These latter often remain on the tree through the winter months. The fruit of this productive tree was not only, as now, a most important article of food when raw, but was also preserved by being pressed into cakes. In this form, figs were brought by Abigail to David and his followers ; and also by the northern tribes to the festival at Hebron (i Sam. xxv. 18 ; i Chron. xii. 40). The Egyptian captured by David's men in their pursuit of the marauding Amalekites had cakes of figs given to him as a restorative (i Sam. xxx. 12) ; and it is worthy of notice that, according to the testimony of Pliny, who described nearly thirty varieties of this valued fruit, ' figs are the best food that can be taken by those who are brought low by long sickness, and are on the recovery.' The employment of figs as a medicament is illustrated in the narrative of King Hezekiah's illness (2 Kings xx. 7, &c.), which accords with both ancient and modern applications of this useful fruit. The Egyptians were fond of cultivating the fig tree, which, as in the imagery of our Lord's parable, is re presented on the monuments as growing in the vineyards ; and the fruit of both the common species and of the inferior sycomore-fig tree was deemed a fit present to the I06 FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. gods. Among the Hebrews, it is scarcely needful to state, first-fruits of all kinds were brought as thank-offerings. It is uncertain when the edible fig was introduced into this country; whether by the Romans, who set much value on the fruit, or as late as the sixteenth century. In favourable spots in the south of England the sweet produce comes to perfection, and far surpasses in delicacy of flavour the dried specimens imported from Turkey, Egypt, and the Mediterranean ; but it often grows in gardens to the size of a tall shrub, being cultivated for the sake of its agreeable foliage. The wood is spongy and oily, though durable ; and therefore of little value. Horace, in one of his coarsest Satires, speaks of a frag ment which he calls inutile lignum, and says, derisively, that the carpenter, being unable to use it for a bench, made it into a god-^, — a passage which recalls the fine description of idol-makers in Isaiah xliv. 9-17. One of the poet's commentators quotes a Greek proverb, 'As brittle as a prop of fig-tree wood;' and the same people had a phrase, ' figgy men,' equivalent to ' weak fellows.' It may be added that the fruit of the fig tree is one of those which, as modern research has so remarkably shown, owe their fertility to the agency of insects. It consists of an enlarged and fleshy receptacle, within which the small and insignificant flowers are clustered, leaving a small opening at the broader extremity, where the insect is enabled to enter and disperse the pollen or fertilizing dust. The flowers are succeeded by the tiny seed-like fruits with which the interior of the fig of commerce is lined. The Greeks forbade the exportation of figs from Attica ; and any one who gave evidence that this law ' Sat. lib. i. 8. FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. 107 had been broken was called crvKocf>avT-qs, a 'fig-informer;' whence our modern words ' sycophant ' and ' sycophancy.' An old tradition asserted that it was on a fig tree in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem that Judas hanged himself, but this doubtful celebrity was by others attributed to the Cercis siliqttastrtim, a red-flowered leguminous tree, growing in Palestine and the South of Europe. Husks (Gk. Kepdrui). 'He would fain have filled his belly with the hushs that the swine did eat.' — Luke xv. 16. Among the minor fruit-trees of Palestine the Carob or locust tree (Ceratonia siliqua) is widely distributed and admired for its dark and shining leaves. It is common in Galilee, in the plain of Sharon and around Acre, and in the ravines of Lebanon and the trans-Jordanic hills. It is specially conspicuous near Beirut, but is not found on the higher and colder situations. It is a leguminous or pod-bearing plant, its long brown beans not only being ground up for cattle and swine, but, on account of their eminently nutritious properties, both pod and seeds are eaten by the poor. The Arabs call them kharitb, and there can be little doubt that they represent the ' husks ' with which the Prodigal Son was ready to satisfy the cravings of hunger. The carob is also called the ' locust ' and ' St. John Baptist's tree,' from an erroneous idea, adopted by some of the Christian fathers, that the pods or ' husks ' formed the food of Christ's great forerunner, whose ' meat was locusts and wild honey.' A more accurate knowledge of Oriental foods has removed the supposed difficulty attached to the simpler interpretation. Io8 FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. The tree is abundant in Malta, and in Cyprus, where it reaches enormous dimensions and forms groves ; it is found, in fact, in all the Mediterranean area. A con fection is made of the pulpy interior of the pods, which Pliny long since described as ' very sweet ; ' and which are not unfrequently eaten, though the entire bean is chiefly used (as in Palestine) for cattle and for horses. It is still exported from Syria to Alexandria, and so into Europe, in large quantities. Dr. Daubeny considers that the carob was thus introduced into Italy. Though not a native of Egypt, it appears from the monuments to have been cultivated in the gardens of that enter prising race. Nuts (Heb. Ci^JU3 botnim, tia.N egoz). ' Carry down the man a present, . . . nuts {botnim) and almonds.' — Gen. xliii. II. ' I went down into the garden of mits {egoz).' — Song of Solomon vi. 1 1. The above brief passages constitute the sole references in Scripture to two important trees — the PISTACHIA and the familiar WALNUT, the edible fruits of which constitute articles of commerce in both Western Asia and Southern and Middle Europe. The Pistachia (P vera) belongs to the terebinth order of plants (Terebinthacex), and is indigenous to Palestine and Syria, where it is extensively cultivated for the sake of its nuts, which are exported from Aleppo and the ports of the Levant. The tree grows also in Southern Europe, where it has become naturalized for many centuries. The oily almond-like kernels are eaten as a dessert and made into a sweetmeat. There is little doubt that these were the ' nuts ' which formed part of the present forwarded to his unknown son by the Hebrew patriarch, the pistachia being a tree of the rocky high- FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. 109 lands, and not growing in the valley of the Nile. The nuts were highly valued by the ancients, both for food and as a stomachic ; and also as ' an antidote to the bite of serpents.' It is possible that the Gadite city, Betonim (Josh. xiii. 26), may have derived its name from these trees. The Walnut (Juglans regia) is too familiar an object to need description either of its general appearance or of the nature and value of its fruit or timber. It may suffice to remark that it is widely diffused, from the Himalayas through China, Persia, Northern Palestine, and the southern and central parts of Europe. It was introduced into England at least as early as the sixteenth century, and was formerly cultivated for the sake of its light, compact, and fine-grained wood ; but since the introduction of mahogany and other foreign timbers, it has been valued chiefly for its wholesome and nutritious fruit. It is only, however, in the warmer parts of our island, or in very sheltered spots, that this tree ripens perfectly. On the Continent, not only are the nuts of vast importance as an article of diet, but the wood is largely used for gun-stocks, and an oil of superior quality is extracted from the seeds. A fermented spirit is obtained from the sap, and a brown dye from the husks and roots. Formerly the leaves and fruit were turned to account medicinally, as Cowley's quaint lines declare : — ' On barren scalps she makes fresh honours grow ; Her timber is for various uses good ; The carver she supplies with useful wood, She makes the painter's fading colours last ; A table she affords us, and repast : E'en while we feast, her oil our lamp supplies ; The rankest poison by her virtue dies; The mad dog's foam and taint of raging skies. The Pontic king who lived where poisons grew, Skilful in antidotes, her virtues knew.' no FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. This last allusion is to the celebrated Mithridates, who carried with him a secret prescription against poison, consisting of a conserve of walnut-kernels, figs, and rue. Pliny says that the Greeks called the fruit Persian and Basilicon, whence he infers it to have been brought from Persia. The Romans called it jttglans or ' Jupiter's nut ' (Jovis glans). Cicero and Virgil both mention this tree ; and the latter tells his husbandman to expect a good wheat harvest if ' the nut blossom plentifully and bend down its odoriferous branches^' It would seem that Solomon planted these fine trees in his gardens near Jerusalem, to which reference has already been made ; and probably they were well known in later days, if not at an earlier period, although the fact is not elsewhere hinted at in Scripture. At the present time the walnut is cultivated in 'all the glens and lower slopes of Lebanon and Hermon.' It grows still in different spots in Galilee, and Josephus speaks of ' old trees ' in his day ' near the Lake of Gennesareth.' Dr. Thomson states that the wood is used for window- lattices in Damascus. Olive (Heb. nn zayith). Olive Oil (Heb. t?^ shemen, I^V! yitshar, HB'D meshach). ' His branches- shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree.' — Hosea xiv. 6. ' A land of oil olive and honey.' — Deut. viii. 8. Regarded by the nations of the earth as a symbol of peace, reverenced by the Greeks as the special gift of the Goddess of Wisdom to man, and celebrated through out the sacred volume for its beauty and its fruitfulness, it is scarcely an exaggeration to entitle the Olive, 1 Georg. lib. i. 187-192. FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. Ill as did the old Roman agriculturist, 'the first of trees^.' Its geographical area comprises the countries bordering the Mediterranean ; but while in Egypt it is compara tively poor, it flourishes in Palestine to an extent and with a luxuriance which make it, to the eye of the modern traveller, the characteristic tree of Israel's heritage. There, in the calcareous and often rocky soil, the olive strikes deep its roots, lifts its gnarled stem, and spreads forth its fresh grey-green foliage, with a beauty all its own. Only on the bleak mountains, and in the hot Jordan valley, is it absent. Elsewhere it is cultivated with increasing care, and would be extensively planted but for the oppressive tax laid upon every tree, which practically prohibits an investment of labour and capital for a profit so distant, the olive not becoming fruitful until the age of twelve or fourteen years. It grows, as in former days, around Jerusalem, and studs Mount Olivet, though in diminished numbers ; it creeps along the hill-sides, and in the warm plains and sheltered valleys almost literally fulfils the ancient declarations : — ' The rock poured me out rivers of oil ; ' ' He made him to suck oil out of the flinty rock ' (Job xxix. 6 ; Deut. xxxii. 13). In the north, olive-yards spread out amidst the valleys of Lebanon and Galilee. The rich coast- plains and the valleys that open into them recall the promise to Asher, ' Let him dip his foot in oil ' (Deut. xxxiii. 24). On the east, Gilead and Bashan retain their olive plantations, and the tree grows wild in the gorges and on the hill-sides. The ' fat valleys ' of Ephraim (Isaiah xxviii. i) still prove how 'pleasant' was the abode of that once-favoured tribe (Hosea ix. 13). Ebal, Gerizim, and Tabor ; Carmel and Sharon ; Ramah, ' Columella, lib. iv. 112 FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. Hebron and Bethlehem, — are adorned with the labour of the olive ; and as when the sorrowing Saviour ' knelt to pray,' the ' olive-shade ' still overhangs the Garden of ovj^ify t. 4 ?.?p.',&' and 44°, but cold is more fatal to it than heat. It has been known in Greece from time imme morial, and is mentioned by Homer ; it was brought thence into Italy, we are told, in the reign of the first Tarquin, and it was introduced into our own island in the reign of Elizabeth. Two points of special value attach to this fruitful tree ; the one is its power of flourishing in a poor soil, the other its slight demands on the care of the husbandman. Both Virgil and Columella advert to these advantages^. The prophet Habakkuk, in a passage already quoted, says that even if ' the labour of the olive' — generally so soon rewarded by a plentiful crop — should ' fail,' he still ' Virg. Georg. lib. ii. 179-181, 420; Columella, lib. iv. I 3 Il6 FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. will rejoice in God (ch. iii. 17, 18); and the earlier references to ' oil out of the flinty rock ' have been cited above. The passages in which ' corn, wine, and oil' are men tioned as the representative productions of the land are too numerous to quote. When prosperity is illustrated or promised, the oil-vats ' overflow' and a blessing comes down upon the land, so that the rich produce of vine yards and olive-yards are gathered in their season. But when judgment is foretold or described, the olive 'casts its fruit' and the oil 'languisheth' (Deut. vii. 13; xxviii. 40 ; Joel i. 10, &c.). The olive is said to grow best when at no great distance from the sea, and Solomon's chief plantations appear to have been near the coast-plain, on the ' Shephelah' or low hills between it and the central highlands (i Chron. xxvii. 28). The fresh verdure and fruitfulness of the tree render it a fit emblem of the righteous man (Psalm Iii. 8 ; Hosea xiv. 6), and the young plants shooting up from the soil around the parent tree are graceful types of the children of his household (Psalm cxxviii. 3). The patriarch Eliphaz says of the wicked, ' He shall cast off his flower as the olive' (Job XV. ^^), alluding to the profusion with which the blossoms sometimes fall from the tree. The gathering of the fruit was accomplished by beat ing the branches, by which means some olives were always left out of easy reach. This is ' the shaking of the olive ' alluded to by the prophet Isaiah : ' two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof (ch. xvii. 6). Al though ' the labour of the olive ' is so hght, it is not wholly unnecessary ; the tree has to be grafted in its wild state, or the fruit is small and worthless. St. Paul uses this FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. II7 fact with striking force in showing the obligations of the Gentiles to the true Israel (Rom. xi. 17, &c.), showing that it is ' contrary to nature' to graft a wild scion upon a good stock. Of the varied applications of the oil Scripture affords abundant examples. It formed the basis of most oint ments and many perfumes. It was used privately for refreshment of the body, and publicly in official cere monies. Kings, priests, and prophets were anointed with oil, and even the name of Messiah — Christ — originated with this custom. It was offered in sacrifices, and it supplied the sacred lamp of the Tabernacle and Temple as well as the humbler means of illumination in private dwellings. It was food and medicine, and ministered alike to the enjoyments of the rich and the sustenance of the poor. A few references are given as illustrations : Gen. xxviii. 18 ; Exod. xxvii. 20 ; xxviii. 41 ; Lev. ii. 1-7 ; i Sam. x. i j i Kings xix. 16 ; Matt. xxv. 3 ; Mark vi. 13 ; Luke vii. 46 and x. 34: also Prov. xxvii. 9 ; Eccles. x. i ; Isaiah i. 6 (oil is here and in other similar passages rendered ' ointment'). It is a significant proof of the abounding fruitfulness and value of this tree, that in the ' Ten Precepts' ascribed by the Jewish Rabbis to Joshua, one of them, which allows a branch to be taken from a tree, specially excepts ' the boughs of the olive.' In Old Testament symbolism the olive denotes outward prosperity and rejoicing ; but in the New it is emblematic of that ' heavenly unction from above ' of which the Jewish anointing of priests and kings was the feeble though fitting type. Among classical nations the olive crown and the olive branch symbolized respectively triumph and peace. Il8 FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. Victors at the Olympic games received a wild-olive wreath ; and at the Pan-Athenaic festival, held in Athens in honour of Minerva, the producer of the olive tree, the aged men carried olive branches to the temple, and the successful competitors were rewarded with a vase of sacred oil. So also the Egyptian soldiers, after a success ful campaign, carried twigs of olive in procession and offered them on the altars of the gods. In modern Cyprus a sprig of olive is hung over the doors of the houses on New Year's Day, as an omen of good-fortune. Pomegranate (Heb. liB"! rimmon). 'A land" of . .pomegranates' — Deut. viii. 8. This beautiful shrub appears at an early date in the history of food, art, and commerce. It was known as a favourite fruit in Egypt before the Exodus, for the . Israelites murmured because the Idumean wilderness was ' no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pome granates' (Numb. XX. 5). The robe of the Jewish high priest had an embroidery of ' pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the hem thereof ;' and the same device appears again on the carved work of the pillars for the porch of the first Temple (Exod. xxviii. 33, 34; i Kings vii. 18, 30). The old Greek writers on botany and medicine, Dioscorides, Theo- phrastus, and Hippocrates, speak of the rind of the fruit being used as an astringent, and the bark of the root as an anthelmintic, a property known at the present' day in both the East and West Indies. By the Greeks the plant was called p6a or pota, and is supposed to have given its name to the Isle of Rhodes. The Romans called it Punica or Punica malum, having obtained it FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. II9 from Carthage. In several of the archaic sculptures from Lycia in the British Museum, deities are represented holding the flower or the fruit of the pomegranate in their hands, probably as emblems of fertility. So in the Assyrian bas-reliefs, attendants on Sennacherib carry pomegranates and other fruit. The Pomegranate (Punica granattim of modern botanists) is a beautiful shrub, with dark and shining leaves and bell-shaped flowers, having both petals and calyx of a deep-red colour. In the autumn it yields a ruddy fruit about the size of an orange, filled with a delicious pulp, in which the semi-transparent seeds lie in rows. Dr. Thomson says that some of the pomegranates of Jaffa are as large as an ostrich egg. They ripen in September or October, and if hung up, will keep good through the winter. The pomegranate was included in the promise of fruit-bearing trees to the Israelites (Deut. viii. 8), and there is no doubt that it was formerly abundant in Palestine. It seems to be indigenous in Gilead, and is cultivated throughout the land, from Lebanon to Jericho. Dr. Thomson mentions a variety in the north which is quite black externally, but the usual tint is reddish, as may be inferred from the Oriental compliment repeated in Song of Solomon iv. 3 ; vi. 7. These shrubs often grow with fig trees near wells, while abounding in the gardens in and near the different towns and villages. An ' orchard of pomegranates with pleasant fruits,' and a ' garden of walnuts ' with ' vines ' and ' pomegranates,' are referred to in the same highly- coloured poem (Song iv. 13 ; vi. 11 ; vii. 13). As of old, ' spiced wine of the pomegranate ' (ch. viii. 2) is made from the fermented juice, which is also drunk as a I30 FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. cooling beverage ; and the seeds are served as a dessert, moistened with wine and sprinkled with sugar. It still grows in the once luxuriant Gardens of Solomon. The prophet Joel bewails the ' withering ' of the pomegranate, while Haggai promises its increase to the remnant of the Captivity (Joel i. 13 ; Haggai ii. 19). This tree gave its name to several cities, as Rimmon or Ain Rimmon (' spring of the pomegranate '), now called Um-er-Rum^min (' mother of pomegranates '), in the inheritance of Simeon on the south (Josh. xix. 7) ; Rimmon or Remmon in Zebulon in the north (ver. 13) ; and the ' rock of Rimmon,' to which the defeated Ben- jamites fled (Judg. xx. 45). Also to one of the stations of the Israelites in the wilderness — Rimmon-parez (Numb. xxxiii. 19). Saul encamped 'under a pomegranate tree,' which must have been near to the Rock of Rimmon (i Sam. xiv. 2). The Egyptians prized and cultivated the pomegranate in their gardens ; and, as already hinted, it was well known to the ancients. Pliny mentions varieties of the fruit, the use of the blossoms for dyeing, of the rind for tanning leather (as now in Morocco), and of both fruit and flowers in medicine. Grenada in Spain is supposed to have derived its name from the pomuni granatum or 'seeded fruit,' and the arms of the province are said to be ¦ a split pomegranate.' The tree flourishes in the West India islands, into which it was long since introduced ; but its native area extends from the Himalayas to the Caucasus. The pomegranate is too delicate a plant for any but the warmest parts of our own island ; and even there it is cultivated simply for its foliage and flowers. It was introduced about 1548, and is mentioned by Lord Bacon, FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. 131 who recommends the juice of the sweet varieties of the fruit as a remedy for ' disorders of the liver.' The rind of the fruit, and the root, are still prescribed, in the form of decoctions, by English physicians. Sycamine (Gk. a-vKdpims). Sycomore (Heb. i^'?i??' shikmah, Gk. avKopaspaia). ' Ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up.' — Luke xvii. 6. ' The sycomore trees that are in the vale.' — i Kings x. 27. In giving almost identical names to the mulberry ((TVKa\s.ivos) and the sycomore-fig (o-u/co'/xopor), the old Greeks were not led into any serious botanical error ; for both the figs and the mulberries are classed by most botanists in the same order of plants. Both terms were derived from ctvkt], a fig, and the sycomore is the ' fig- mulberry,' so called from its resemblance to the fig in its fruit and to the mulberry in its leaf. The ' Morea ' derives its name from its similarity to the latter in form. But the two names were often used inter changeably, the sycomore-fig being called the 'Egyptian sycamine.' By Latin writers the two kinds were dis tinguished by different names. Modern Biblical critics have contended that their predecessors were in error in supposing the 'sycamine' of Luke xvii. 6 to be identical with the ' sycomore ' of Luke xix. 4, and of the half-dozen references thereto in the Old Testament. But although, as we have seen, translators of former days fell into many excusable mistakes in matters of scientific identification, two points may fairly be urged in their favour in the present instance. The first is, that in the Septuagint Version of the Old Testament every instance in which the 122 FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. Hebrew has shikmin the Greek has cruKcijuti'os, ^sycamine', and not ' sycomore^ though the fig, and not the mulberry, is certainly intended. St. Luke, therefore, may easily have used the two names interchangeably. The second argument is forcibly put by Dr. Thomson : ' As to the mulberry, it has yet to be shown that it was then known in Palestine ; . . . and further, the mulberry is more easily plucked up by the roots than any other tree of the same size in the country, and the thing is oftener done. Hundreds of them are plucked up every year in the vicinity and brought to the city for firewood.' We conclude then that the word sycamine, instead of being used in its strictly classical sense in the passage above cited, is employed, as in the Old Testament, to denote the Sycomore-FIG, and as synonymous with the o-tiKO/xwpata of Luke xix. 4. The tree thus alluded to is a true fig, and has no natural alliance with the maple sycamores of Europe and North America, which belong to an order not represented in Palestine. It is the Ficus sycomorus of botanists, and is still common in warm and sheltered localities in that country. In Egypt ' Pharaoh's fig trees,' as they are called, are less abundant than formerly, leading some modern travellers to doubt, but quite unnecessarily, whether this was the true ' Egyptian sycomore ' of Theophrastus and Dioscorides. Dr. Thomson has given a full description of this noble tree of wayside, valley, and plain. He says it is easily reared, grows rapidly, and becomes a giant in girth, with wide-spreading branches and enormous roots. It bears several crops of figs during the year ; but they are small and insipid, compared with those of the better-known F. carica. Still, they are gathered, as by the prophet Amos of old, FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. 123 and sent into the markets for food, chiefly among the poorer classes ; among whom alone ' gatherers of syco more fruit ' are to be found (see Amos vii. 14). Children, like Zaccheus, often climb into the branches. In flowers and foliage it closely resembles the common fig, but grows to a greater size, sometimes reaching a height of thirty or forty feet, and a diameter of twenty. The wood is soft, but durable, and therefore useful ; and this fact will serve to explain several Biblical allusions. David, and Solomon after him, had special plantations of sycomores and olives under the care of crown officials, in the ' Shephelah' or low hills near the coast, where the climate is mild and equable (i Chron. xxvii. 28 ; I Kings x. 27). Solomon in his years of wealth and prosperity made cedar timber as common as sycomore wood. In later times, when national apostasy had brought divine judgments on the land, Ephraim and Samaria are represented as saying, ' in their pride and stoutness of heart,' — ' the bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones : the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars ' (Isaiah ix. 9> lo)- With cedars, pine trees, and oaks, the Hebrews might well regard the v/ood of the sycomore-fig as an inferior material ; just as the fruit was not to be compared to that of the allied species. But in Egypt it was far otherwise. The sycomore yielded the largest planks ; it was extensively cultivated for coffins, tables, doors, boxes, tablets, and idols ; while as a fruit-tree its figs were valued much more highly than in Palestine, being included in the sacred offerings to the gods, and even selected as the heavenly fruit to be given to the righteous on their admission' to eternal happiness. Hence we can 124 FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. well understand the severity and significance of the visitation mentioned by the Psalmist (Ixxviii. 47) : ' He destroyed their vines with hail, and their sycomore trees with frost.' Like the statelier palm, the sycamore has almost disappeared from the city of Zaccheus the publican. An aged specimen grows near the Pool of Siloam at Jerusalem, and is said to mark the site of Isaiah's martyrdom. Vine (Heb. |B3 gephen, Gk. aixTriXos). ' Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt.' — Psalm Ixxx. 8. If the Olive be the most abundant and characteristic tree of Palestine, the Vine has been from ancient days the chief type of Israel and of Israel's inheritance. On coins and sculptured monuments, on temples and tombs, in the writings of prophets and psalmists, and in the teachings of Him who was emphatically ' the True Vine,' this lowly but fruitful shrub is interwoven with the thought and history of the chosen people. The Syrian climate, soil, and water-supply all favour, in a peculiar degree, the cultivation of the grape ; and this branch of industry has been practised in the East from the very dawn of history, as we learn from one of the earliest chapters of the Book of Genesis. In like manner vineyards were planted in Asia Minor and the south of Europe before the days of Homer ; while the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments attest their former abundance on the banks of the Nile, and in the great empires of the Farther East. We need not wonder, therefore, that in classic fables the Egyptian Osiris and the Greek Dionysus were credited with the first bestowment of the vine, as Minerva of the olive. It FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. 135 abounds in Cyprus, some five and thirty square miles of that interesting island being planted with this richest of fruit. Yet the botanical home of the vine ' must be sought in the regions between Caucasus, Ararat, and Taurus.'- ' Here,' says Dr. Royle, ' as well as in the elevated valley of Cashmere, the vine climbs to the top of the loftiest trees, and the grapes are of fine quality and large size, in many places of the intermediate country.' Of its economic uses the same writer concisely adds : ' Every part of the vine was, and still continues to be, highly valued. The sap was at one time used in medicine. . . . When ripe the fruit is everywhere highly esteemed, both fresh and in its dried state as raisins. The juice of the ripe fruit, called must, is valued as a pleasant beverage. By fermentation, wine, alcohol, and vinegar are obtained ; the lees yield tartar ; an oil is sometimes expressed from the seeds ; and the ashes of the twigs were formerly valued for their potash.' Its range is wider than that of the other conspicuous fruit-trees of Palestine ; yet it will neither bear extreme heat on the one hand, nor combined cold and damp on the other. In the Eastern hemisphere its limits extend from the equator to latitude 50°, or even higher ; in the Western hemisphere it reaches only 40° from the equator. Between 30° and 35° — a region including of course Syria and Palestine — the vine reaches its highest perfection. In Europe, however, the products of the French vineyards are reckoned superior to all others, in quantity and quality. English vines are mentioned by the Venerable Bede and in Domesday Book, and were probably introduced some centuries earlier by the Roman colonists of Britain. 136 FRUIT TREES AND SPIRUBS. The island of Ely was called ' Isle of Vines ' by the Normans, and grape orchards are frequently mentioned in connexion with monasteries. Bishop Grindal sent presents of grapes to Queen Elizabeth from his gardens at Fulham ; but from about that period the cultivation of the fruit appears to have declined. Those now celebrated for their size or productiveness are grown under glass, as at Hampton Court. Prof. Schouw says that the greatest number of bunches known to have been cut from a single plant was in the case of a vine at the Rosenberg Gardens at Copenhagen, which yielded no less than 419, weighing 610 lbs. ' In the south of France there were said to be instances of bunches weighing from 6 to 10 lbs. each, and a traveller in Palestine relates that they are to be met with there up to 17 Ibs.^ ' The general aspects of this plant, — its graceful foliage, clasping tendrils, fragrant though inconspicuous blossoms, and clustered fruit, — are too well known to need descrip tion; but it may be remarked that soil and cultivation have given rise to varieties which may be numbered by hundreds, while the flexible stems and boughs can be trained in the most diverse ways to suit the taste or convenience of the husbandman. No product of the field is more bountiful or compliant, yet none has been so irrationally and fatally abused. In estimating the predominance of vineyards as a feature in the scenery of ancient Palestine, and an element in the sustenance of its once teeming and prosperous inhabitants, we must remember not only the ravages of successive invaders from the Babylonians and Assyrians onward, and the destructive effects of atmospheric agencies upon a thin soil artificially cleared ' Schouw, Earth, Plants, and Man. FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. 127 of timber ; but also the fact that the Saracens, following out the Mahometan prohibition of the use of wine, * uprooted the vines,' as an old writer asserts, when they overran the country. A later traveller, the shrewd and accurate Maundrell, who visited the Holy Land in 1697, comments, as many since his time have done, on the bare aspect of the southern hills ; but gives the true key to the difference between modern and ancient Judea, in the loss of the needful soil through neglect ; and adds the opinion that these rocky slopes were just adapted for olive and vine culture. And yet, in spite of past injuries and present mis- government, the vine is cultivated throughout the land, from Lebanon to Hebron, though of course in diminished numbers. Vineyards dot the hill-sides with miniatures of beauty and luxuriance ; the laden branches trail on the ground as in some parts of the Lebanon district, climb the walls of rude stone, or are trained on trellises in gardens and court-yards, as now at Jericho, forming delightful arbours — a ' shadow from the heat,' and a pro tection from the ' sun' that 'smiteth by day.' Remains of rock-hewn vine-presses, and of towers built for the protection of the husbandman, occur more or less frequently throughout the hills of Palestine, and tell the same silent but impressive story as the oil- presses already referred to. It is equally suggestive to note that Nature has in some instances resumed her sway, oaks and lentisks having sprung up where once the vines of Israel flourished. If we include the products of this ' plant of renown,' as well as the plant itself, the various^^Biblical allusions to the vine will number more than four hundred. It will not therefore be possible, even were it necessary, to quote 128 FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. more than a few of those passages which seem to call for special remark. As to the geographical range of the vine in Old Testament times, we readily gather such facts as the following : — It is first mentioned in connexion with Ararat, its primitive habitat, where, as we are informed, the patriarch Noah planted a vineyard (Gen. ix. 3o). We next read of the vine as a familiarly known and cultivated plant in Egypt, as illustrated in the dream of Pharaoh's 'chief butler' (ch. xl.), and of the destruc tion of the Egyptian vineyards by hail-storms (Psalm Ixxviii. 47). The extent and importance of this in dustry are abundantly and graphically depicted on the monuments, where the whole process of training the vines — usually on trellis-work supported by pillars — of gathering the fruit, and of converting it into wine, is exhibited. In prophetic language, Israel itself was a vine brought out of Egypt (Psalm Ixxx. 8). In the in sulting challenge of Rabshakeh, or rather the Rabshakeh (i.e. the chief cup-bearer) of Sennacherib to the Jews in the reign of Hezekiah, he offers to ' take them away' to a land like their own — ' a land of corn and ivine, a land of bread and vineyards' (2 Kings xviii. 32). So also, somewhat later in the history, Belshazzar and Xerxes had their ' banquets of wine,' Nehemiah appears as cupbearer to Artaxerxes, and Nahum and Habakkuk denounce the Ninevites and Chaldeans for their shame ful intemperance (Dan, v. i, 2 ; Neh. i. 11 ; Nahum iii. 11 ; Habak. ii. 15, t6). In accordance with these passages we find the use and abuse of the fruit of the vine repeatedly exemplified on the Assyrian sculptures. The culture of the vine by the Canaanitish races, anterior to the Hebrew invasion, is manifest from such FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. 1 29 incidents as the meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek, the report of the spies, and the allusions of Moses to the promised inheritance (Gen. xiv. 18 ; Numb. xiii. 20, 24 ; Deut. vi. 11). And even at that early period the district in which this branch of agriculture reached its highest perfection in Southern Palestine may be inferred from the patriarchal promise to Judah : — ' Binding his foal unto the vine and his ass's colt unto the choice vine ; ' while the well-loved Joseph is compared to the ' fruitful bough ' of a vine growing ' by a well, whose branches run over the ' stone 'wall' of the terraced plantation (Gen. xlix. 11, 22). The valley of Eshcol (grape cluster) yielded the huge sample of grapes carried to Moses by the spies, and received its name from the circumstance (Numb, xxxii. 9). The valley of Sorek (vineyard) in the Philistine plain was similarly named (Judg. xiv. 5 ; xv. 5 ; xvi. 4). So also 'the plain of the vineyards' (Abel-keramim), east of Jordan (ch. xi. 33). Later on, the vineyards of Engedi, on the western shore of the Dead Sea, are specially mentioned (Song of Solomon i. 14); and Jeremiah laments for the wasting of the Moabite vineyards of Sibmah (ch. xlviii. 32). The wine of Helbon in Anti- Lebanon was exported to Tyre, according to Ezekiel (xxvii. 18); and the 'scent of the wine of Lebanon' is alluded to by Hosea (xiv. 7). In our own day. Canon Tristram reports that the raisins of Eshcol are delicious; Mr. Fisk mentions the luxuriance of the vines of Hebron, whose fruit, according to Dr. Thomson, is finer than those in most other parts of the country. Buckingham and earlier travellers declare that the wines of Lebanon are in no degree inferior to the best of those in France. At Engedi K 130 FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. (Ain Jidy) the terraces still remain, though the vineyards have disappeared. And, as of old, the 'wild vine,' which is to the cultivated kind what a crab-apple is to a pippin, still overspreads ruins and waste places, bearing its 'sour grapes,' which no man cares to eat. Mr. Smith ^ thinks that a variety or species known as the Oriental vine ( V. orientalis), producing a small acid fruit, may be the 'wild vine' of the prophecies, and possibly the 'de generate plant of a strange vine' (Isaiah v. 2; Jeremiah ii. 21). This, however, is certainly not the 'wild vine' of 2 Kings iv. 39, which was manifestly a poisonous herb (see WiLD ViNE, Chapter IV). It is needless to quote passages for the purpose of proving the extent and importance of the vine, and the value attached to its produce in Palestine, during the long periods covered by Old and New Testament history; or to the abundance and excellence of the Syrian vintage. It will suffice to mention the ori ginal promises made to the Israelites before they had been consolidated into a nation ; the imagery of psalm and prophecy; and the fact that no less than five of the parables of the Great Teacher relate to vines and their culture. Equally significant is it to note that about a dozen words are found in the Hebrew and Greek languages (chiefly the former) to denote this plant and its uses. Nor does it fall within the compass of the present work to detail the processes of this or any other branch of agriculture. A few points, however, deserve special reference. The phancy and adaptability of which we have already spoken were fully recognized by the ancient ' Bible Plants. FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. 13X inhabitants of Palestine. They imitated the Egyptians in training the vines over trellises, and their grate ful shade was the emblem of prosperity and peace. The character of the soil taught the Canaanites and their successors the construction of terraces. In the court-yards of large houses, and on the walls of cottages, the vines spread their interlacing tendrils ; and it is probable that they were also allowed to climb round fig and other trees. In the north, they are and probably were trained along the ground with but slight support (Psalm Ixxx. 10 ; cxxviii. 3 ; Ezek. xvii. 6). As now, the vineyards were surrounded with walls of rude stone or with a hedge, or both (Isaiah v. 5 ; Mark xii. i). Between such walls Balaam rode. ' Cottages,' or huts, of rough unhewn stone, roofed with earth, are built for the keepers, as in Old Testament days; and more substantial 'towers' were erected whence a look-out might be kept against the depredations of man or beast, of prowling robber or ' boar out of the forest,' or the young jackals that 'spoiled the vines' (Isaiah i. 8; v. 3; Matt. xxi. 33; Psalm Ixxx. 13 ; Song of Solomon ii. 15). The autumnal vintage, like the grain harvest which preceded it, was a season of special rejoicing (Isaiah xvi. 10 ; Jer. xxv. 30). The general arrangements are described in Isaiah's parable (ch. v.), and in that of our Lord (Mark xii. i, &c.). The poor were allowed to glean in the vineyards, as in the corn-fields (Lev. xix. 10) ; the 'vine-dressers' also belonged to the poorer classes (Isaiah Ixi. 5). Beside the ordinary terms used in the Old Testament for the vine and its produce, there are several others, translated with varying degrees of accuracy in the English Version; such as 'noble vine' (probably indi- K a 132 FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. eating one of the numerous varieties of the cultivated plant), ' tender grapes ' (possibly the blossom), ' raisins,' ' grape-gleanings,' ' new,' ' red,' ' strong,' ' sweet,' ' mixed ' or ' spiced ' wine, and others. Of these it is only necessary to remark, that the word ii'^ip (tirosh), rendered ' new' or 'sweet wine,' — or 'wine' only, when associated with 'corn' and 'oil,' — appears to denote the produce of the vine generally, and not chiefly the fermented juice ; just as ' corn' signifies all kinds of grain, while ' oil' similarly represents the summer fruits of Palestine when the edible fruitage of the land is spoken of. The 'vinegar' of the Old Testament was either a weak wine, such as the reapers were accustomed to drink during the heat of harvest (Ruth ii. 14), or else what we designate by that term, as in Proverbs x. 26. The 'wine' provided in such enormous quantities for the Temple builders by Solomon's orders is supposed to have been of the former kind. The vinegar given to the Saviour on the cross was doubtless the ' posca,' or wine and water, commonly drunk by the Roman legionaries. In the figurative language of Scripture the vine is emblematic of the chosen people, of the blessings of the Gospel dispensation, and also of Him in whom the Church in its various members lives and grows, and of His blood shed for the ransom of mankind (Isaiah v. 7 ; Iv. I ; John xv. i ; Matt. xxvi. 27-29). The 'treading of the winepress' is emblematic of Divine judgments (Isaiah Ixiii. 2; Lam. i. 15 ; Rev. xiv. 19, 20). The classical allusions to the vine and its produce would fill a volume. From its original home, ' the vine,' says Professor Hehn, ' accompanied the teeming race of Shem to the Lower Euphrates in the south-east, and to the deserts and paradises of the south-west, where FRUIT TREES AND SHRUBS. 133 we afterwards find them settled. From Syria the culti vation of the vine spread to the Lydians, Phrygians, Mysians, and other Iranian or half-Iranian nations which had in the meantime moved up from the east. Thus it entered the Greek peninsula on the north ; ' and by Greek voyagers it was introduced into Italy. The second book of Virgil's Georgics supplies not a few striking illustrations of Scripture. The poet, for instance, refers to the ' innumerable ' varieties of the vine ; the need of constant care and attention, and of due manuring and pruning ; the possibility of degeneracy into a wild condition, yielding a sorry fruit fit only for birds ; the fitness of a light and chalky soil, and the suitableness of open hills for vineyard culture. 'That land,' he says 'which exhales thin mists and flying vapours, and absorbs and returns it at pleasure, and which clothes itself with verdant grass, will entwine joyful vines with elms, and will be rich in oil ^.' He also advises the planting of vines 'in military array,' that is in regular rows at equal intervals, just as the Greeks planted the olive in Northern Palestine ; both perhaps relics of the original plan adopted in Western Asia, though not followed by the Hebrews on the hills of Canaan. The vine, as above stated, appears with the date palm, fig, and pomegranate on the Assyrian monuments — one of many evidences of the fertility and industry which once prevailed beside the Tigris and Euphrates. ' Georg. lib. ii. 184-193, 217-221, 259-289, &c. CHAPTER IV. GRAIN AND VEGETABLES. ' The original habitat of the farinaceous grasses,' says Humboldt, in his Aspects of Nature, 'like that of the domestic animals which have followed man since his earliest migrations, is shrouded in obscurity. . . It is a most striking fact that on one half of our planet there should be nations who are wholly unacquainted with the use of milk and the meal yielded by narrow-eared grasses, whilst in the other hemisphere nations may be found in almost every region who cultivate cereals and rear milch cattle. The culture of different cereals is common to both hemispheres ; but while in the New Continent we meet with only one species, maize, we find in the Old World the fruits of Ceres (wheat, barley, spelt, and oats) have been everywhere cultivated from the earliest ages recorded in history.' Since Humboldt thus wrote, the labours of Alphonse De Candolle and other botanists have thrown much light on the origin and history of these and other food-plants, though the conclusions reached must necessarily be conjectural in many cases. In the countries bordering the Mediterranean, wheat and barley have been known from the dawn of history; and millet also, though it held a subordinate place. Egypt was once the world's chief granary; afterwards Sicily and Barbary : but in modern times the vast GRAIN AND VEGETABLES. 135 empire of Russia, both north and south, and the rich plains of America, have become the most abundant sources of supply. Homer and the classic poets recognize three methods of utilizing the soil, viz. the rearing of cattle, the planting of fruit-trees, and the growing of corn. And in the sacred books of the Far East the question is asked : ' Who is the fourth that fills this earth with the greatest contentment ? ' and the answer given is, ' He who cultivates most corn, grass, and trees that afford nourish ment.' So in the promise to the Israelites concerning their future inheritance, the fruit-trees, the pasturage, and the corn-lands are all included (Lev. xxv. 3, 4, 5, 7 ; Deut. viii. 8, 9, 13). What Herodotus said of Babylonia applied, though in a less degree, to ancient Egypt, — its native fruit-trees were few, but its soil produced the richest corn. Egypt, however, was a vast ' garden of herbs,' as well as a field of corn ; and just as we are reminded of this fact in one of the earliest passages of patriarchal history, where Abram, driven from Southern Palestine by a temporary famine, goes down to sojourn in Egypt (Gen. xii. 10), so we have the first mention of esculent vegetables (the lentile excepted) when the Israelites, or rather the ' mixed multitude ' of their camp-followers, bewailed the loss of ' the cucumbers and the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlick', which they had eaten beside the Nile. It is also observable that nearly all the vegetables and cereal grains mentioned in Scripture are known to have been cultivated in Egypt ^. The Hebrew words denoting these edible plants are seldom of doubtful meaning, and the general terms for ^ See Hehn, Wanderings of Plants and Animals, 136 GRAIN AND VEGETABLES. wild and cultivated grasses are fairly represented by their equivalents in the Authorized Version. There are, however, one or two exceptions. The word IVO chatsir is rightly rendered ' grass ' in most instances, but in two passages (Prov. xxvii. 25 and Isaiah xv. 6) it is un fortunately translated ' hay,' — an obvious error, as living and not cut grass is manifestly intended. ' Hay making,' in our sense of the term, is not practised to any extent in Palestine ; though the dried ' grass on the housetops ' and fields is occasionally gathered, ^b*}? eseb is generally rendered 'herb ;' thus, in Psalm civ. 14, 'He causeth the grass (chatsir) to grow for the cattle, and herb (eseb) for the service of man.' Yet eseb is rightly translated grass in Psalm cvi. 20, ' an ox that eateth grass! Another word, >