176 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 
tropical, harmonising with the region in which it stood. But in 
Palestine, while the general surface of the country is temperate, 
the contrasts of climate and productions are secured by lifting, 
within a small area, one part to the arctic heights of the Lebanon, 
and sinking the other part to the tropical depths of the Jordan 
Valley. 
That Jordan Valley is the special feature of Palestine. It 
is an extraordinary depression or crevasse in the bowels of the 
earth, extending from a little above the Sea of Galilee down 
to the southern extremity of the Dead Sea. It is altogether 
unique. There is nothing like it anywhere else. The country 
ascends in the north about 10,000 feet above the level of the sea, 
and sinks in the south to a depth of 1,320 feet below the level of 
the sea. The climate of the former region is therefore temperate, 
while that of the latter is semi-tropical. Between these two 
extremes, the various climates of different localities differ as much 
from each other as those of England and India. And the vege- 
table productions are equally dissimilar. 
The Botany of Western Palestine differs but little from the 
Botany of Italy, Southern Europe, and Asia Minor. We find the 
same genera and species largely in the Riviera. But the Botany 
of Eastern Palestine, and especially of the Valley of the Jordan 
and the Dead Sea Basin, is entirely different from the European 
flora. The plants of Lebanon remind us of those of Northern 
Europe ; those of Galilee, Samaria, and Jerusalem, of Italy, Spain, 
and Greece; and those of Jericho and the Jordan Valley, of 
Arabia, India, and Egypt. The great bulk of the Palestine plants 
belong to what is called the Germanic flora. The largest genus of 
plants is Astragalus, a Leguminous tribe, which has no less than 
seventy species belonging to it, covering in most cases, in great 
profusion, the drier and more barren districts. These species of 
Astragalus are nearly all identical, or very closely allied, to the 
Astragali of the lower ranges of the Himalayas, or the hills of 
Afghanistan. Being an Asiatic more than a European family, 
they must have emigrated westward from the Indian mountains 
to the hill country of Palestine during a late period in its geologic 
history. The hundred or so species of semi-tropical plants which 
belong to the Jordan Valley and the basin of the Dead Sea, some 
of which are of Indian, but most are of African type, were 
a ee errr 
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