1859.] CHAPTERS ON BRITISH BOTANY. 135 



The Vine, mentioned in very early times as an object of culti- 

 vation, was the same specific plant which is now so common in 

 the temperate regions of the West. 



The cereal Grasses of Palestine were in all probability nearly 

 the same as our own. 



The ancients were acquainted with both the Summer and the 

 Winter Wheat, Tt^iticum cestivum and T. hyemale. Barley was 

 also generally cultivated then as it is now. It is not believed 

 that these corn -producing plants were indigenous in the East. 

 They were cultivated, as they still are, in all parts of the world 

 where the temperature will admit of their cultivation. 



The edible vegetables, the cucumbers, melons, the leeks, the 

 onions, the garlic, etc., of Holy Scriptures are well known among 

 us, and are still objects of general cultivation and domestic con- 

 sumption. 



We do not expect to find in the Bible a list of the natural 

 productions of those countries inhabited by the people whose his- 

 tory is contained in the books of the Old Testament. The 

 books of Holy Scripture contain the moral and religious and civil 

 history of the chosen people, but not the natural history of the 

 laud in which they lived. Plants are mentioned in connection 

 with them and their modes of life, but are never so precisely de- 

 scribed as to leave no doubt about the species intended by the 

 sacred historians, prophets, and poets. When it is related that 

 Abraham dwelt under the Oak at Mamre, and that Elijah laid 

 himself down and slept under a Juniper-tree, it is not to be in- 

 ferred that the common Oak of our forests, and the Juniper shrub 

 of our hills and downs, are the same as those mentioned in the 

 inspired volume. The trees, herbs, and flowers of the Bible are 

 employed figuratively or metaphorically, to give clearness, force, 

 or dignity to expression. 



It is now well known that the Oaks of Palestine are not Quer- 

 cus pedunculata* nor Q. sessiliflora. There are Oaks in the 

 Holy Land, but they are chiefly of the evergreen species, and 

 Oaks that bear edible acorns. 



The British Oak indeed bears fruit ; and it has often been re- 



centifoUa. The Rose of Jericho {Anastatica hierocTiuntica) is a very different 

 plant. 



* Belonius, who reached the Holy Land in 1546, did not obserTe our British Oak 

 there. The discoveries of this traveller wei-e pubhshed by Clusius. 



