244 SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY. 



grateful seasoning to bread ; perhaps by sprinkling it upon it, as 

 we do caraway and other small seeds. 



Mr. Parkhurst thinks the gith to have been the same as our fen- 

 nel ; and he quotes Ballester, who says, * gith is commonly met with 

 in gardens; it grows a cubit in height, sometimes more. The 

 leaves are small, like those of fennel, the flower blue, which, disap- 

 pearing, the ovary shows itself on the top, like those of a poppy, 

 furnished with little horns, oblong, divided by membranes into 

 several partitions and cells, in which are inclosed seeds of a very 

 black color, not unlike those of a leek, but very fragrant.' But, as 

 Mr. Taylor justly suggests, the circumstance of Ballester comparing 

 the gitU to the fennel is decisive against the notion of Parkhurst, 

 that it was this particular plant. That it classes with the fennel 

 may be readily admitted ; but not that it is the same. 



