1859.] CHAPTERS ON BRITISH BOTANY, 169 



Few fruit-trees are common to both lands. Pyrus Malus and 

 P. communis, the Apple and the Pear^ are both included in the 

 Flora of Palestine; but Ave read nothing about fruit-bearing 

 bushes, nor even of the Strawberry. The mountains and plains 

 of Israel were far too warm for fruits that grow naturally in this 

 climate. The Almond-tree, often mentioned in Scripture, and 

 especially in the Book of Ecclesiastes, is the only one which 

 just now occurs to memory. In Hoses and Brambles, already 

 mentioned, we have the representative genera, but few, if any of 

 the species. 



It is remarkable that Violets do not occur in the Sacred Wri- 

 tings. The plant neither attracted notice for its beauty nor 

 praise for its virtues. Like the obscure and lowly, it appears to 

 have been, in the land of the Hebrews, " born to blush unseen, and 

 waste its fragrance on the desert air." 



It is probable that the Centaureas, which abound in the Holy 

 Land, were all lumped together with Carduus, Carthamus, Cy- 

 nara, Serratula, and Echinops, under the general name of This- 

 tles; while Ononis, Crat(egus,Rhamnus, Acacia, etc., might rank 

 as Thorns ; the Hoses, Brambles, and such-like being classed as 

 Briars. 



The Heath of Scripture is another representative of a series of 

 plants of which we may probably have some of the genera but no 

 species ; and the term does not convey to us the same idea that 

 it conveyed to the ancient denizens of that land. 



Our term Heath is restricted to plants of the genus Erica. 

 The ancients, both Jews, Greeks, and Bomans, gave a wider 

 sense to the word. Even our early English botanists included 

 under Heath, plants which are widely different from modern 

 Heaths, Frankenia, for example, an herbaceous, diminutive ob- 

 ject, but which bears the name of Sea-heath. 



Commentators are almost unanimous in opinion that the Heath 

 of Scripture is Tamarix, Tamarisk, or Myrica. Another refine- 

 ment. Heath is not altogether unknown in Syria and Palestine. 

 Even the genus is represented by the Erica orientalis, and the 

 Order by Erica and Arbutus, of which one species is a native of 

 the British Isles, — the glory of the lakes of Killarney. The 

 Strawberry-tree, Arbutus Unedo, if not native in England, thrives 

 well here, and bears our severest winters. 



The prophet, in foretelling the destruction of Moab, and in 



N. S. VOL. III. Z 



