190 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 
longed search would have added to his list. Another peculiarity 
of the flora of the Dead Sea struck me at the time. On account 
of the extraordinary-evaporation that takes place in this heated 
furnace, balancing and drawing up into the air the inflow of all the 
water of the Jordan, the climate is a great deal moister than it is 
in the Wilderness of Judea, or among the mountains of Moab—to 
the east and south. Masses of swirling vapour and silvery mists, 
at morning and sunset, very often overhang this deep trench. 
Consequently, though we find here growing a great many repre- 
sentative species of the dry desert flora, their appearance has been 
greatly modified by the changed circumstances. On the shores of 
the Dead Sea the woolly plants of the desert lose a great deal of 
their pubescence, develop to a certain extent their thorns into 
foliage, and are not nearly so pungent or so sticky and gummy as 
they are in their own proper soil, which has created these adap- 
tations by its excessive aridity. Another peculiarity still of the 
flora of the Dead Sea is the almost continuous flowering and 
fruiting of the plants, owing to the invariableness of the conditions. 
The climate hardly changes all the year round. Consequently you 
see plants of the same kind side by side, one in flower and the 
other in fruit. and others in both flower and fruit at the same time. 
There seems to be very little respite in these exhaustive functions ; 
and the species as a whole seem to be comparatively short-lived. 
The plant which catches the eye most conspicuously is Chrysan- 
themum coronarium, whose white stars grow in great abundance 
among the delicate grasses on the sandy banks quite close to the 
waters of the Dead Sea. It was almost the only plant that was 
gregarious, and it was a most effective ornament in the place. Of 
the bushes, the most attractive was the graceful Retama (Retama 
monosperma), closely allied to our Broom, with large hanging 
bunches of small pink flowers and minute foliage. It grows toa 
height of a dozen feet. It is essentially a desert plant, and was 
the Juniper, under the shadow of which the disconsolate Elijah lay 
down to die at Horeb. I also saw the curious Camphire bush, 
Lawsonia alba, to which reference is made in the Song of Solomon: 
“My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards 
of Engedi.” Asa wild plant it belongs to the Asiatic peninsula. 
It is almost extinct in this locality; and I have no doubt that the 
few specimens I saw were escapes from the ancient gardens of 
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