PREFxVCE 



(TO TIIK FIRST KDITIOX). 



Tins work owes its origin to the wants experienced by a translator of 

 the Bible. 



Ever since the day that man was set to dress the garden of Eden and 

 to give "names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air and to every beast of 

 the field," he has in every age and every clime been a lover of nature. It 

 has been remarked of the Hebrews, especially, that "they make such 

 frequent recurrence, for metaphorical expressions, to natural objects, and 

 particularly to plants and trees, that their poetry may almost be termed the 

 botanical poetry." The Hebrew and Greek Testaments contain between 

 seven and eight hundred names of natural jjroductious found in the countries 

 whore the books were written, and Michaelis says " there are upwards of 

 two hundred and fifty botanical terms." These names and terms enter into 

 many thousands of verses, the proper rendering of whkii depends 



UPON A CORRECT KNOWLEDGE OF THE THINGS DESIGNATED. And hoW much 



more lucid and interesting will appear the Book of God if these terms be 

 rightly translated ! 



Throughout the inspired writings of the ancient Scriptures and in all 

 the teachings of the Apostles we find constant allusion to the works of 

 nature. And our Saviour in his parables and similitudes continually draws 

 from the natural scenes of the earth which his almighty hand had fashioned, 

 that " the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world might be 

 clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." But had his 

 hearers been unacquainted with the peculiar names and properties of the 

 plants or animals to which he referred, they could never have felt as they did 

 the overwhelming power of his arguments and illustrations. And yet by 

 some translators, a very considerable proportion of the botanical and zoological 

 names that occur in the Bible are unnecessarily transferred ! " Not being 

 a zoologist, botanist, or mineralogist," wrote a distinguished translator, " I 

 have not unfrequently, in disposing of technical terms, whose meaning I 

 could not satisfactorily settle, gone the whole animal, plant, or mineral, as 

 the case might be, and transferred it." 



