234 HAUPT— MANNA, NECTAR, AND AMBROSIA. 



The night is often called ambrosial; this does not mean holy, as is 

 generally supposed, but balmy. Thomas Moore (Lalla Rookh 248) 

 speaks of One of those ambrosial eves \ A day of storm so often 

 leaves. Tennyson (In Mcmoriam, Ixxxvi) says: Sweet after shozv- 

 ers, ambrosial air and (CEnone) : A fruit of pure Hesperian gold \ 

 That smelled ambrosially (see OD s. atnbrosial). Also ambrosial 

 sleep means balmy sleep, i.e. healing, refreshing sleep. Edith M. 

 Hull says in the first chapter of The Sheik: It was a wonderful night, 

 silent except for the cicada's monotonous chirping, mysterious with 

 the inexplicable mystery that hangs always in the Oriental night. 

 The smells of the East rose up all around her ; here, as at home, they 

 seemed more perceptible by night than by day. Often at home she 

 had stood on the little stone balcony outside her room, drinking in the 

 smells of the night — the pungent, earthy smell after rain, the aromatic 

 smell of pine trees near the house. It was the intoxicating smells of 

 the night that had first driven her, as a very small child, to clamber 

 down from her balcony, clinging to the thick ivy roots, to wander 

 with the delightful sense of wrongdoing through the moonlit park 

 and even into the adjoining gloomy woods. She had always been 

 utterly fearless. 



There is no connection between the Gr. nectar and ambrosia and 

 the Biblical manna. The manna, which sustained the ancestors of 

 the Jews in the wilderness, was a nutritive lichen like the Iceland 

 moss and the reindeer moss, especially the Lecanora esculenta, known 

 as manna-lichen,'^^ which in times of great drought and famine has 

 served as food for a large number of men in the arid steppes of the 

 various countries stretching from Algeria to Tatary (EB^^ 16, 584). 

 Fragments of manna-lichen carried away by the wind resemble grains 

 of wheat. They vary in size from a pea to a hazel-nut." The edible 

 lichens contain not only starchy substances, but also in some cases a 

 small quantity of saccharine matter of the nature of mannite. It is 



i^Littre says s. manna: // est certain qu'elle est formce de lichens, sur- 

 tout de lecanora affinis et lecanora esculenta. 



1' According to Num. 11, 7 the manna was like coriander seed. The 

 smooth globular fruits of coriander sativum are twice as large as hemp seed 

 or about the size of a peppercorn. The Hebrew word in Exod. 16, 14, ren- 

 dered round in AV means Aaky; see RV, margin; cf. EB 879, n. 4. 



