170 CHAPTERS ON BRITISH BOTANY. {Juue, 



warning the people that their safety was in flight, said, " Flee^ 

 save your lives, and be like the heath in the wilderness ; " he 

 reminded them that, as a nation, they would be no more esteemed 

 than the Heath and Linff, or worthless shrubs of the desert. 

 Again, when the same prophet describeth the wretched state of 

 those who trust in man and make flesh their arm, and who with- 

 draw their confidence from Grod, he compares such to the Heath 

 in the desert, where they receive no benefit from the dews and 

 rains of heaven, but cumber for awhile the dry, parched soil, and 

 are ready to be kindled and consumed by the slightest spark. 

 " But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope 

 the Lord is ; for he shall be like a tree planted by the waterside, 

 which spreadeth out her roots to the water and her branches in 

 the air, and does not feel Avhen the heat cometh, but her leaf is 

 still green and her fruit plentiful." This is poetical description, 

 such as is only to be met with in Holy Scripture. 



Hasselquist, in his Oriental travels, enumerates and names 600 

 plants seen by him in Arabia, Palestine, and Syria. Of these, 

 upwards of 100, or nearly 120 (114), grow in England, are British 

 plants by reputation. Many more are acclimatized here. 



Forskal, the Dane, botanized in Egypt and Arabia, about the 

 middle of the eighteenth century. Like Hasselquist, his labours 

 were prematurely ended by death. He died in 1763; Hassel- 

 quist in 1752. Belonius and Bauwolf visited these lands in the 

 sixteenth century. Clusius published the discoveries of the 

 former, and our famed countryman Bay published an abridg- 

 ment of Rau wolf's journey, in his account of curious travels in 

 the East. There is a complete translation of this work by Sta- 

 pherst (London, 1693). 



Besides these, the learned Bochart, Pococke, Shaw, Russell, 

 and others, have incidentally written on the plants of Holy Scrip- 

 ture. 



The following have investigated the subject per se, viz. Wil- 

 liam Westmacott, a physician of Newcastle- under-Lyne, whose 

 work is a curious relic of the knowledge of that early time, en- 

 titled, — 



" Theolobotanologia, sive Historia Vegetabilium Sacra : Or a Scrip- 

 ture Herbal, wherein all the trees, shrubs, herbs, plants, flowers, fruits, 

 etc., both foreign and native, that are mentioned in the Holy Bible (being 

 near eighty in number) are in an alphabetical order rationally discom'sed of. 



