1859.] CHAPTERS ON BRITISH BOTANY, 137 



and carved into a graven image, and worshiped/^ In his forty- 

 fourth chapter he sternly rebukes the infatuation of those who 

 were so stupid and degraded as to worship what they themselves 

 had grown and made. 



The Willows " by the watercourses/^ whereunto, in the same 

 chapter of the same prophecy, the servants of the Lord are com- 

 pared, are probably species distinct from our British Willows. 

 The only species in Hasselquist are Salix babylonica and S. 

 (ngyptiaca, the former well known in England as the Weeping 

 Willow, and believed to be that tree on which the maids of Jewry 

 hanged their harps when their vanquishers insulted them by ask- 

 ing them to sing the songs of Zion. This is pathetically described 

 by the Psalmist in Psalm cxxxvii. : " By Babel's streams we sat 

 and wept, . . . and hanged our harps on the willows in the midst 

 thereof." 



There are recorded as growing in Palestine many plants which 

 are not mentioned in Holy Scripture, and there are also several 

 plants named in the Bible which have no representatives in our 

 land. 



The textile or fibre-bearing plants, viz. Hemp and Flax, are 

 common to both Britain and to the Holy Land ; they are both 

 cultivated very extensively in western Europe, and one of them 

 is commonly grown in the British Isles. They are generally re- 

 garded among us as interlopers, as strays and waifs rather than 

 as genuine natives. Have they any native country ? Are they, 

 like the domesticated animals, or like the cereals, dependent on 

 man for their very existence as plants ? The history of economi- 

 cal plants has yet to be written. Botanists — some of them at 

 least — infer that, because there is no very striking difference be- 

 tween the wild Oat and the cutivated Oat, the one is derived from 

 the other, or is only a variety of the other ; also that our Carrots, 

 Parsnips, Cabbages, etc., in all their varieties, have at some pe- 

 riod or other originated in or among the wild examples. Many 

 excellent varieties of both fruit and vegetables have been raised 

 rather than discovered in our times, but they have been rather 

 the rewards of industry and perseverance than the results of 

 accident. 



Many of our salad-plants, such as Chicory, Lettuce, Endive, 

 Mustard, Cress, etc., are common both to our islands and to the 

 ancient Jewish territories. 



N. S. VOL. III. - T 



