Dr Robinson on the dpples of Sodom. 25 
We saw here several trees of the kind, the trunks of which 
were six or eight inches in diameter; and the whole height 
from ten to fifteen feet.* It has a greyish cork-like bark, with 
long oval leaves ; and in its general appearance and character it 
might be taken for a gigantic perennial species of the milk-weed 
or silk-weed found in the northern parts of the American 
States. Its leaves and flowers are very similar to those of the 
latter plant, and, when broken off, it in like manner discharges 
copiously a milky fluid. The fruit greatly resembles exter- 
nally a large smooth apple or orange, hanging in clusters of 
three or four together, and, when ripe, is of a yellow colour. 
It was now fair and delicious to the eye, and soft to the touch ; 
but on being pressed or struck, it exploded with a puff, like a 
bladder or puff-ball, leaving in the hand only the shreds of the 
thin rind and a few fibres. It is indeed filled chiefly with air, 
like a bladder, which gives it the round form; while in the 
centre a small slender pod runs through it from the stem, and 
is connected by thin filaments with the rind. The pod con- 
tains a small quantity of fine silk with seeds, precisely like 
the pod of the silk-weed, though very much smaller, being in- 
deed scarcely the tenth part as large. The Arabs collect the 
silk and twist it into matches for their guns, preferring it to 
the common match, because it requires no sulphur to render 
it combustible.+ 
The most definite account we have of the apples of Sedom, 
so called, is in Josephus, who, as a native of the country, is a 
better authority than Tacitus or other foreign wr%ters.{ After 
speaking of the conflagration of the plain, and the yet remain- 
ing tokens of the divine fire, he remarks, that ‘there are still 
to be seen ashes reproduced in the fruits, which indeed re- 
* Irby and Mangles found them measuring in many instances two feet or 
more in circumference, and the boughs at least fifteen feet in height, a size 
which far exceeded any they saw in Nubia. P. 450. 
t Gregory of Tours would seem to have heard of this tree: “ Prope Je- 
richo, habentur arbores, que lanas gignant; exhibent enim poma in modo 
cucurbitarum, testas in circuitu habentia duras, intrinsecus autem plena sunt 
lane.” Of this wool, he says, fine garments were made. Gregor. ‘Turoncns 
Mirae. lib. i. c. 18. 
{ The Bible speaks only of the “ vine of Sodom,” and that metaphorically , 
Deut. xxxii. 32, 
