PLANTS OF PALESTINE. 



arrived at La Farlede, which is about an hour's drive 

 distant from Hyeres, inquire for the cart track which 

 the inhabitants of the village know as the Pas de 

 Galle, and follow this till, after about a quarter of an 

 hour's walk, you reach a stream descending from 

 Mt. Coudon, where the banks are clothed with this 

 beautiful shrub. 



The Styrax yields a resinous balsamic juice, used 

 in perfumery and medicine. The incense burned in 

 Romanist churches is derived from a tropical species 

 of the same genus.* The plant, or the gum that exudes 

 from it, is more than once mentioned in the Bible. 



It is strange that the Styrax, so attractive with 

 its white flowers and yellow stamens, should not be 

 cultivated in the gardens of the Riviera. But 

 gardens, like churches and schools and ladies' 

 costumes, are ruled by fashion, or as some prefer to 

 call it " orthodoxy.'"' 



Styrax is not yet admitted to rank as a garden 

 plant : its beauty, its rarity, its star-spangled twigs, 

 its perfumed gum, all these do not avail. Even that 

 most uninteresting of all rank straggling shrubs, the 

 Deeringia, looks down upon the lovely Styrax ; for 

 is not the former an " ornement des massifs " ? Was 

 it not brought from the Antipodes ? Residents in 

 Nice or Cannes may not set eyes upon the Styrax ; 

 but those who stay at Mentone, and visit Sir Thomas 

 Hanbury's wonderful garden, should not miss the fine 

 specimen growing near the house. 



* It has lately been shown that incense is derived from Styrax 

 officinalis, the species which is found on the Kiviera and in Palestine. 

 The gum is collected in the Levant. See " Science Papers," by Daniel 

 Hanbury, F.R.S., pp. 8 and 129. T. H. 



