30 FLOWERS OF THE HOLY LAND. 



acquainted with the trees and plants of Syria (1 Kings iv. 33) 

 would introduce into Palestine choice foreign plants to orna 

 ment the gardens of which he speaks. Josephus tells us &quot;that 

 the balsam for which Judea was so famous came from the 

 Queen of Sheba, who presented a root of it to Solomon.&quot; (Antiq. 

 lib. viii. c. 0.) Cambyses introduced the peach into Egypt, 

 (Maillet s Letters, ix. p. 17;) and it is thought to be beyond 

 dispute that the cassia, the orange and lemon varieties, the 

 apricot, the moseh, (a delicious fruit, but which cannot be 

 kept,) the pomegranate, the cous or cream-tree, are none of 

 them natives of the country. (Pococke s Description of the 

 East, v. 1-205.) Now look again upon the fields of the Holy 

 Land, and another truth appears in addition to that which we 

 have mentioned. The fruits and plants which are the same 

 in name and kind as those of the times of the Scriptures are 

 not the same in excellence. They are but the shadows of what 

 they were. Changes have swept over the country which have 

 affected the soils perhaps in some of those small but important 

 parts of which we have spoken; and thus, while the manner 

 of cultivation is unquestionably different from and inferior to 

 that of former days, there are changes not attributable to 

 cultivation alone. We have, in our wanderings over the hills 

 of Palestine, gathered the cotton, the wheat, and the corn; 

 we have examined the varieties of the grape, the seeds of 

 which have been carried to other lands and planted. When 

 we first plucked the cotton upon the hills of Samaria, its dimi 

 nutive size forbade the idea that the seed would ever permit 

 a favorable comparison between its pod and that of the cotton 



