I860,] MUSTAllD-TREE OF SCRIPTURE. 39 



dens, suffers no change of character ; the pollen is not likely to 

 he carried on the proboscis of those insects, as it would be on 

 the feeding parts of insects in general. 



How happy were the days of our infancy, when we in fairy 

 groups went Maying to the Primrose copse to pick the full-blown 

 Primroses from their mossy couch, prattling on our infantile 

 affairs, to us then of much import, ere care in our bosoms found 

 a place, or sorrow more than a momentary stay ! With the 

 Primrose corolla- tubes we blew our fairy trumps, then sang our 

 morning hymn responsive to the feathered warbler's matin song, 

 the selfsame song which their first parents raised at life's first 

 dawn to sing their Maker's praise. Then to the meads, to pick 

 the Cowslip flowers to make our Cowslip ball, or in our little 

 baskets pick their corollas to make that soothing wine so much 

 famed in those epidemics to which infancy is prone and oft so 

 fatal. 



MUSTAED-TEEE OP SCEIPTUEE. 



Salvadora Persica, tke true Mustard-tree of Scripture. 



(From Sir J/E. Tennent's 'Ceylon.') 



" The identification of this tree with the Mustard-tree alluded 

 to by our Saviour is an interesting fact. The Greek term cr/- 

 vaTTi, which occurs in St. Matthew xiii. 31 and elsewhere, is the 

 name given to Mustard ; for which the Arabic equivalent is 

 Chardul, or Khar dot, and the Syriac Khardalo. The same name 

 is applied at the present day to a tree which grows freely in the 

 neighbourhood of Jerusalem and generally throughout Palestine, 

 the seeds of which have an aromatic pungency, which enables 

 them to be used instead of the ordinary Mustard {Sinapis nigra) ; 

 besides which, its structure presents all the essentials to sustain 

 the illustration sought to be established in the parable, some 

 of which are wanting in the common plant. It has a very small 

 seed : it may be sown in a garden. It grows into an ' herb,' and 

 eventually ' becometh a tree ; so that the birds of the air come 

 and lodge in the branches thereof.^ With every allowance for 

 the extremest development attainable by culture, it must be felt 

 that the dimensions of the domestic Sinapis scarcely justifies the 

 last illustration ; besides which, it is an annual, and cannot possibly 



