182 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 
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plants as I journeyed on from place to place. In order to study 
the Botany of Palestine thoroughly, and make a good collection 
of plants, you must give to the task as many weeks as I gave 
days, and you must rest for long periods at a time in certain 
centres, and make long excursions from them throughout the 
surrounding country. Your-visit must also extend over several 
seasons ; for though there is a great simultaneous rush of flowers 
over the whole country at the beginning of April, yet many plants 
blossom sooner or later than this, and you must be in time for 
their unfolding. A resident in Jerusalem has grand facilities for 
acquiring a complete knowledge of the flora, for he can choose his 
own time ; and owing to the small size of the country and the close 
contiguity of all its principal points, the different habitats, even 
in the most remote localities, are not too far off, and he has all 
the appliances for pressing the specimens he gathers always at 
hand. 
In an extensive garden next to Hardwig’s Hotel at Jaffa, I saw 
a rare assemblage of semi-tropical plants, which reminded me of 
Mr. Hanbury’s wonderful acclimatization garden near Mentone. 
I was informed that the garden did not belong to the hotel ; but 
T could not find out who had formed it. The Castor-oil Tree was 
very luxuriant ; and a large number of Acacias, Mimosas, Fan- 
palms, Bananas, India-rubber, and Orange Trees made the most 
delicious shade in the ardent sunshine. 
The first plant I saw after leaving Jaffa and entering upon the 
Plain of Sharon was a foreigner. This was the Opuntia, or 
Prickly Pear, of which all the hedges are made. It protected the 
Orange groves at Jaffa from the highway by a formidable barrier 
of thorns more than twelve feet high. I thought of the fabled 
gardens of the Hesperides guarded by the dragon. It could not 
have done its duty better than these vegetable dragons. The 
Opuntia, like all the members of the Cactus family, belongs 
exclusively to the Western World, and could only have been 
introduced into Palestine after the discovery of America. 
Ignorance of this fact has led to many curious anachronisms 
among painters and travellers. Some of the old masters 
painted incidents in our Lord’s life, surrounded by landscapes 
in which this Opuntia, or Prickly Pear, figured largely; inno- 
cently imagining that as it is now, so it must always have 
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