PLANTS IN SCRIPTURE 117 



and the scales thereof preferment ; and that oxen lean 

 and fat naturally denote scarcity or plenty, and the 

 successes of agriculture. 



Physiognomists will largely put in from very many 

 passages of Scripture. And when they find in Aris- 

 totle, quibus frons quadrangula commensurata, fortes, 

 referuntur ad /eories, cannot but take special notice of 

 that expression concerning the Gadites ; mighty men 

 of war, fit for battle, whose faces were as the faces of 

 lions. 



Geometrical and architectonical artists look narrowly 

 upon the description of the ark, the fabric of the 

 temple, and the holy city in the Apocalypse. 



But the botanical artist meets everywhere with 

 vegetables, and from the fig leaf in Genesis to the star 

 wormwood in the Apocalypse, are variously interspersed 

 expressions from plants, elegantly advantaging the 

 significancy of the text : whereof many being delivered 

 in a language proper unto Judaea and neighbour countries, 

 are imperfectly apprehended by the common reader, 

 and now doubtfully made out, even by the Jewish 

 expositor. 



And even in those which are confessedly known, the 

 elegancy is often lost in the apprehension of the reader, 

 unacquainted with such vegetables, or but nakedly 



