EXHIBIT OF BIBLICAL ANTIQUITIES. 955 



precious purple dye, which was extensively prepared from the shell- 

 fish Mnrex. Tyre is often mentioned in the P>il)le under the name of 

 ^or.' The modern (^ur, on its site, is an unimportant town of about 

 5,000 inhabitants. 



Granite from Jebel Musa. — Jebel Musa (mountain of Moses) is 

 one of the peaks in the southeast of the Sinaitic Mountain range. It 

 rises about 7,000 feet above the sea level, and tradition assigns to it the 

 giving of the Law to Moses. The Sinaitic Mountain chain is formed 

 of granite and i)ori)liyry. The quarries and mineral deposits of the 

 Sinaitic Peninsula were worked as early as 3,000 B. C. 



FLORA. 



The ilora, like the geology of the country, was but inadequately rep- 

 resented, the following specimens being the only ones shown : 



Seed pods of the carob tree. — The carob or locust tree ( Cera- 

 tonia siliqua) is common in (lalilee, in the plain of Sharon, and in the 

 countries around the Mediterranean Sea in general. The island of 

 Cyprus alone produces at present about 30,000 tons of carobs, almost 

 the whole of which is exported to England and France, and "this 

 quantity is produced by hardly a third of the carob trees growing in 

 the island, because jterhaps the other two-thirds of these trees are 

 not yet grafted."^ Its fruit is a brown pod, from to 12 inches long, 

 about an inch broad, having a tleshy or mealy pulp, of an agreeable 

 taste, which is not only ground up for cattle and swine, but also exten- 

 sively used as food by the Arabs, Moors, and Italians. Large quantities 

 of carob are used, especially in France, for distillation, and also for 

 producing a sort of molasses' The English name is borrowed from 

 the Oriental, probably coming from the Arabic* Harruh through 

 Spanish; it occurs in the Talmud in the form Harul). It is generally 

 assumed that the carob beans represent the "husks," in the Revised 

 Version "pods of the carob tree," (in the Greek original uspdrzov, 

 deration) in the parable of the Prodigal Son.'' Through a confusion 

 bet\teen the pods of the carob tree (also called locust) with the locusts 

 (insects, Greek aupide?^ alcrides) which John the Baptist ate,'' it was 

 thought that the pods formed the food of John the Baptist, and they 

 are still commonly called " St. John's bread." 



Sycamore from Palestine. — The sycamore tree [Ficm sycomonis), 

 Hebrew shiqtnah^ is represented in I Kings x, 27, as having been 

 abundant in Palestine in the reign of Solomon : "The king made silver 

 to be in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars made he to be as the sycamore 

 trees that are in the lowland for abundance," and similarly we read in 



' Ezekiel xxvi-xxTiii, etc. 



^P. G. Gennadius, Reiiort on the Agriculture of Cyprus, Pt. 1. p. 17. 

 3/<iej>i.,pp. 18, 19. 



■■It also occurs in French. See Romarques sur les mots tranvais derives de I'arabe, 

 par Henri Sommens, S. J., Beyrouth, 1890, p. 18. 

 ••^Luke XT, 16. 

 ^Matthew iii, 4. 



