40 DIVI BOTANICI. 



young child would be more fond of the delicate and sweet flowers 

 of the field than of ill-scented and immature apples ; therefore, 

 it rather appeareth to me that he brought to his mother some other 

 vegetable than Mandrake." 



Ancient herbalists generally impute ungenial and narcotic proper- 

 ties to the Mandrake, with a prompt tendency, through decomposi- 

 tion, to become the source of ill-scented and deleterious emanations. 

 With the Banana and Plantain-tree, it is altogether the reverse : 

 their fruit is not less beautiful to the sight ; its fragrance is more 

 grateful to the smell, and its savour is more delicious to the taste, 

 than that of the Mandrake. From such reasons, and others drawn 

 from the comparative economy of these three vegetables, with the 

 manifest inexistence of even one fact to shew that Rachel's longing 

 for her sister's pleasant fruits was created by any other motive than 

 admiration of their visible and sensible qualities, the conclusion is 

 probable — that the translation which represents the Dudaim as a 

 Banana or Plantain-lree, is the version which most faithfully pre- 

 serves the word's original signification. 



Were the Mandrakes of Reuben,* the Grapes of Eshcol, and the 

 sweet-scented Mandrakes of the Prince's daughter, to be considered 

 as clusters of the Plantain-tree or the Banana, the records of these 

 would then stand for the first authentic notices of the Musaceous 

 family and their delicious fruits. When the Macedonian soldiers 

 returned from Alexander's Indian expedition, their tales of marvels 

 concerning sights and deeds did not form an exception to the displays 

 of pleasant fiction next to inseparable from the stories of romantic 

 or chivalrous adventure. From this source of popular information, 

 the Greek and Roman naturalists procured the elements of those 

 sketches of theirs which originally introduced the Musacea; to a 

 place in European literature. 



Theophrastus had acquired an extraordinary consideration, as the 

 successor to Aristotle and as an eloquent teacher of ethical science 

 and phytology, at the time of Alexander's enterprize against the 

 people of the east ; and, having survived this magnanimous aggres- 

 sor for thirty years, th« physiologist had fair opportunities of pro- 

 curing information from his travelled countrymen, regarding the 

 Natural History of those kingdoms on which they had inflicted the 

 miseries of a stern and romantic depredation. From communica- 

 tions thus furnished, he evidently drew the sketches of Indian trees, 



* Genesis xxx, 14, 15, 16 : Numbers xiii, 23, 24 : Solomon's Song vii, 13. 



