A PASSING GLANCE AT THE FLORA OF PALESTINE. 189 
buildings, which Elisha’s servant gathered in this place for 
a meal to the starving prophets during a great famine, and 
which would have poisoned them all had not Elisha neutralised 
its virulent qualities by putting some meal into the pot. This 
was an exceedingly natural mistake for the servant to have 
made, for he was a stranger to the productions of the locality, 
having come from the north of Palestine, where there was a 
species of Gourd or Melon grown in the gardens, very like 
this Gilgal plant, and which was exceedingly good to eat. I 
saw the deadly Gourd in question (Citrwllus Colocynthis), from 
which we prepare the well-known drastic medicine, straggling 
along the bare ground for many yards, with its long tendrils and 
large oak-shaped leaves ; and the fruit, about the size of an orange, 
looked like a ripe melon, very tempting both in appearance and 
smell, so that it was no wonder that the prophet’s servant should 
have been deceived by it. On the plain of the Jordan I also saw a 
few specimens of the Acacia Seya/—the Shittim Tree of Scripture 
—from which the wood of the Tabernacle was derived. It looked 
a weird gnarled tree, with dense clumps of foliage which the sun 
could not penetrate, and certainly more like a bush than a tree. 
On the opposite side of the Jordan there were groups of this 
singular tree scattered here and there, some of them very aged and 
battered ; and they preserve still the old name of Abel-Shittim— 
“the meadow of the Acacias”—given to the place where they grow, 
which was the last camping-ground of the Israelites before they 
crossed the river and entered the Promised Land. 
The flora of the northern extremity of the Dead Sea is wonder- 
fully varied and luxuriant. The bitter waters of this grim inland 
basin, 1,520 feet below the level of the ocean, are utterly destitute 
of life ; but nothing can be brighter or more luxuriant than the 
vegetation that covers the sandy banks on its shores. The main 
peculiarity of its flora, so far as I could observe during a brief visit, 
seems to be the great variety of species compared with the number 
of individuals. Almost every plant I noticed was different ; and 
it was represented only by one or two specimens. Social plants 
forming groups, tufts, and clusters were, to an unusual extent, 
absent, with the exception of some grasses. And hence the 
traveller, visiting the spot for a few hours or a few days, would in- 
evitably miss seeing many plants which a more thorough and pro- 
