Plants of Marocco. 413 



scribe as " Arbol corpulento, casi generalmente reputado por 

 especie de cedro, por ser muy olorosa su madera :" but they 

 then favour us with translating it by Acer, which my Latin 

 tells me is the Maple tree ! 



It is curious that the wood of which the Ark of the Cove- 

 nant was made (Exod. xxv. 10.; and xxxvii. 1. &c.) is named 

 in our vulgar English version Shitti?n, — a very correct pronun* 



ciation indeed of the Hebrew 0*Dt^, which in Arabic is 

 UJ^, pronounced sent (or sant, or more correctly santoon); and 



this is translated by Richardson " A kind of thorn, acacia;" 

 and Golius (p. 1225.) makes it also "Acacia." This is given 

 by De Castro as " maderos de cedros ;" but a modern Spa- 

 niard, Father Philip Scio de S. Miguel, sets the thing down, 

 in more prudent ignorance, as " maderas de setun" ! 



The names of different woods mentioned in the Bible seem 

 to have strangely confounded the translators ; for I find that 

 of which the Noachic ark was ordered to be made, (Genesis 

 vi. 14?.) in Hebrew *^£3J, that is, to be pronounced Gopher; so 



written in our received version, for want, of course, of a better 

 acquaintance with the ancient botany of Syria. This Gopher- 

 wood is written in the Chaldee DVTlp Kadros. May this be an 



etymon of x3gos? the cedrus of the Latins (who by the way 

 never, most assuredly, pronounced their c softly like an s, as we 

 and some other Europeans think fit to do in reading Latin). 

 If this my conjecture be found to have foundation, then old 

 Abraham Mendes has made a luckier hit perhaps than usual, 

 in translating gopher as " sedro." Gopher is in the Arabic 

 version before me, — published, in quarto, at Newcastle-upon- 

 Tyne, in 1811, and which edition was, I understand, super- 

 intended by the late Arabic Professor the Rev. J. D. Carlyle, — 



Ul,c-£>, or shemshar. 



Father Philip, the aforesaid modern Spaniard, seems again 

 in this passage tacitly to confess his utter ignorance of the 

 matter, by turning gopher into " maderas labradas" ! 



11. Rhamnus Lotus, Linn. This shrub is, according to 

 Mr. Schousboe, common in the whole of Marocco, growing 

 in the plains; but I have not met with it in this northern pro- 

 vince Al Gharb. I found it in great abundance on the plains 

 of Sragna and near Marocco, in the vast plain watered by the 

 Tensift; and yet more frequently, I think, in the stony arid 



plain on the west of the lesser range of hills called *ltoi. 



1 



