PREFACE. 



the word, but of both facts the translators were manifest- 

 ly ignorant. 



These examples, which might be easily multiplied, 

 illustrate the advantages which a translator with some 

 knowledge of the natural sciences, possesses in dealing 

 with the Word of God. But the reader asks, " why need 

 he enter scientifically into these studies? Why does he 

 not take the lexicons, and other helps prepared for him?" 



Many are the admirers of nature, but let it not be sup- 

 posed that all are her observing students. The pages of 

 learned men in Europe and America, who have inci- 

 dentally written upon natural history, prove that they are 

 not. 



Rosenmuller is the author of the best work extant on 

 the botany of the Bible, yet his unskillful treatment of the 

 subject sufficiently attests his slight knowledge of the 

 science. His descriptions are usually ill written, and 

 bring before the eye of the reader no definite picture. 

 They are often moreover very defective, giving popular 

 names, as beans and lentils, which are indefinite and ap- 

 plicable to different species and even to different gen- 

 era, without the systematic names, which alone are deter- 

 minate and enable a translator to render accurately. Oc- 

 casionally his statements are erroneous. Of agallochum 

 or wood-aloes he says : " There is a species of this tree 

 that grows in the Moluccas, called garo, Linnaeus has de- 

 scribed it as Exceca?-ia agallocha." It would perhaps 

 be difficult to find two trees in the whole vegetable king- 

 dom with more opposite properties, than these two spe- 

 cies. The Burmese are well aquanted with both. Mr. 

 O'Riley observed correctly that, " Akyau is a very fra- 

 grant, and a very scarce wood of high value with the na- 

 tives." This is agallochum or wood-aloes.* The other 

 is a tree that the Burmese call ta-yau,i abundant near 

 the sea, the juice of which is said to produce the most 

 intense pain, and often blindness if it enters the eye. 

 From its power to produce blindness the Karens call it 

 the " blind tree ; " and the natives are all of them so 



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