180 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 
leaves of this mountain sorrel in the burning heat, the circumstance 
recalled the memory of many a romantic botanical excursion on 
the Highland hills. | We hardly notice the excessively common 
and hardy Dog-Mercury, which fills our woods in Spring; but 
when I saw-a clump of it in a little wood at Samaria, I never 
greeted the most gorgeous flower with such effusive admiration, 
for it brought back the April blood of-long ago into my veins. 
And when my foot accidentally trod upon a tuft of Geraniwm 
Robertianum growing on the green sward of the sacred enclosure 
of the Haram, in front of the Mosque of Omar at Jerusalem, and 
the keen familiar foxy smell of its leaves came up to my nostrils, 
I was transported at once in imagination to the little schoolhouse 
in the corner of a wood filled with this plant, to which I used to 
find my way when a boy, with my clothes perfumed with its fra- 
grance. When passing the marshes filled with Papyrus, on the 
margin of Lake Huleh, I saw in the spaces of open water the 
graceful milk-white cups of our own Water-lily, and here and there 
the expanded buttons of the yellow species, gleaming golden in the 
brilliant sunshine from among the dark-green leaves ; and the sight 
brought up fairy visions of moorland lochs far away, with crimson 
reflections of heather banks mingling with the snowy chalices in 
the bright blue depths. And when I climbed the hill behind 
Nazareth, where our Lord spent His early days, and saw the 
ground covered with myriads of Daisies, that looked the same as 
our own “wee modest crimson-tipped flower,” only they were 
larger and more luxuriant—the Bellis sylvestris of Southern 
Europe instead of the Bellis perennis of our meadows—I thought 
of our Saviour often visiting this spot, and gathering and admiring 
these familiar Daisies, and perhaps making chains of them as we 
ourselves did in our childhood ; and the thought made Him more 
- real, and brought Him nearer than a hundred sermons could have 
done. 
I may remark, that not only were we too early in the season, 
during our visit to Palestine last March, for the full blaze of flowers 
for which the country is remarkable, and which is usually about 
the beginning or middle of April, but our mode of travel was 
utterly unfavourable for making a collection of-plants. Our large 
personally-conducted party had to pass rapidly over the ground ; 
no opportunity of lingering here and there by the way could be 
