32 FLOWERS OF THE HOLY LAND. 



been planted. The seeds, therefore, possess a permanency of 

 character unknown even in the soil, and in each healthful grain 

 there is a little volume of unchangeable matter, a little book of 

 the history of vegetation, which was written three thousand 

 years ago, and every part of which is as perfect as when it 

 dropped from the stalk. It tells us that the soil of the country 

 has changed, and not the seed, and that when the parent 

 stalk was growing the soil was in the highest state of fertility. 

 It speaks not only of the past, but, when compared with the 

 other seed-volumes which are now found in the land, tells us 

 that once there were vineyards, and fields of corn and wheat, 

 which grew from the ancestors of these present families of 

 plants, far exceeding in size and in beauty the degenerated 

 offspring. We need nothing more than experiments upon 

 the present grains and seeds of the land to show that there 

 was once, many centuries past, a nobler race of plants, from 

 which these seeds have descended. 



Let us inquire into the cause of this change. An an 

 swer to this question shall include some notice of ancient 

 gardens; but there is another answer, which cannot be 

 founded upon any knowledge of the surface. Mr. Lyell, the 

 geologist, has noted changes in the elevation of the land which 

 are now in progress, affecting a large portion of the country 

 north of Palestine. The same changes are evident north of 

 Tyre, as shown in a recent work;* and, strange as it may seem 

 to some, the whole land of Palestine is but the covering 



* Palestine, Past and Present, p. 187. 



