SECTION II. 

 FRUITS. 



NUTS. 



THESE are mentioned among the articles whicli Israel desired 

 his sons to take as a present to the governor of Egypt, his unknown 

 child, Gen. xliii. 11. Bochart, Shaw, and some other critics are of 

 opinion that the pistachio nut is intended, the finest in the world 

 being found in Syria ; but according to others, it was the produce 

 of a species of the terebinth, which some prefer to the pistachio, 

 and some think superior to the almond. The name of this kind of 

 terebinth us is, in Arabic, beten, which is the word used in the pas- 

 sage under consideration. 



HUSKS. 



IT now seems to be admitted that the word ceration denotes not 

 peas and beans, but the fruit of the cerationa, or carob tree, com- 

 mon in Spain, Italy, Turkey, and the East, where the fruit still 

 continues to be used for the same purposes as that referred to in 

 Luke xv. 16. Galen speaks of it as a woody kind of food, creating 

 bile, and necessarily hard of digestion. Sir Thomas Brown is 

 thought to have been the first to have discovered the sort of vegeta- 

 ble here meant ; aud as his details are, upon the whole, the most 

 complete and interesting, and the work itself of not frequent oc- 

 currence, we make the following extract: 



* That the prodigal son desired to eat of husks given unto swine, 

 will hardly pass in your apprehension for the husks of beans, peas, 

 or such edulious pulses; as well understanding that the textual 

 word, ccration, properly intendeth the fruit of the saligna tree, so 

 common in Syria, and fed upon by men and beasts; also, by some, 

 the fruit of the locust tree, and Panis Sancti Johannis, as conceiv- 

 ing it to have been part of the diet of the Baptist in the desert. 

 The tree and fruit is not only common in Asia, and the eastern 

 parts, but also well known in Apuglia, and the kingdom of Naples, 

 growing along the Via Appia, from Fundi unto Mola: the hard 

 cods or husks make a rattling noise in windy weather, by beating 

 26* 



