78 DOVES DUNG. 



be likely that the price of the doves would have been stated 

 as well as that of the contents of their crops. A writer has 

 quoted a chronicle of the history of England to show that in 

 1316, during a terrible famine, the poor ate pigeons dung. But 

 another writer says that the onithogalum is a native of England, 

 and that at that time it was commonly eaten in Italy and other 

 countries, and that the pigeons dung of the chronicle was there 

 fore nothing else than the doves dung of Scripture. 



The root of the onithogalum has been used in Syria, it is 

 said, in all ages as an article of food. In many places we 

 saw it growing with all the vigor of an indigenous plant; 

 and it is found at the present day about the hill-sides and 

 fields of Samaria. Great numbers grow in the garden of Campo 

 Santo at Pisa ; which has been attributed to the fact that, the 

 soil of this garden having been brought from Palestine as ballast 

 in ships, the onithogalum enjoyed its native soil though under 

 an Italian, sky. The singularity of the name as applied to a 

 plant will not appear so great when we reflect that &quot;pigeons 

 food&quot; is the name of another plant, which, in the dictionaries of 

 1737, is found compared with one then generally known as the 

 &quot; crane s bill.&quot; 



The root of this plant is rough-coated and irregular, tuberous 

 rather than bulbous, and of medium size. The bulbous root 

 and the plant are represented in Plate IV. and occupy the middle 

 of the group. 



