Mr. I^ambert's Note on the Mustard Plant of the Scriptures. 449 



Note on the Mustard Plant of the Scriptures. By Mr. Lambert. 



I beg leave to offer also to the notice of the Society a few observations 

 relating to the Mustard Plant of the Scriptures, about which so many doubts 

 have been raised. I am convinced it is the mustard now in daily use among 

 us. Mustard-seed was used by the Romans and other nations of antiquity in 

 medicine, as it is at this day. I shall endeavour to prove from the New Testa- 

 ment that the Sinapis nigra is the plant our Saviour alludes to in Matthew, 

 chap. xiii. verses 31 and 32. " Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, 

 The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard-seed, which a man took, 

 and sowed in his field : which indeed is the least of all seeds : but when it is 

 grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds 

 of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof." Likewise in another part, 

 Mark, chap. iv. verses 31 and 32. " It is like a grain of mustard-seed, which, 

 when it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth : 

 but when it is sown, it groweth up, and becometh greater than all herbs, and 

 shooteth out great branches ; so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the 

 shadow of it." Our Saviour is not to be understood as speaking scientifically 

 or specifically when he said, the smallest of seeds ; he was speaking only com- 

 paratively, and meant no more than a small seed ; and when he spoke of it 

 as the greatest of herbs, and becoming a tree, he may be supposed to have 

 meant no more than that it bore a resemblance to a tree of low stature : its 

 branches would give it the appearance of a tree, and small birds might lodge 

 or rest upon it. 



Now in the two last verses quoted we find it described as being a great herb, 

 and branched, so that the fowls of the air might lodge under it, as the partridge 

 and quails do under oiu* corn. Tlie following passage in Luke, chap. xvii. 

 verse 6. " And the Lord said. If ye had faith as a grain of mustard-seed," 

 plainly shows it was a grain in common use, and he therefore chose it as his 

 figure, that it might be understood by the meanest capacity. What Mr. Frost 

 says about the Phytolacca he took from some conversation he heard in my 

 library, not relating to the Mustard-seed of Scripture, but to a plant mentioned 

 by Captains Irby and Mangles, of which they brought me a specimen, and 

 which proved to be Salvadora persica, found by them growing in a hot valley 



