PLANTS IN SCRIPTURE 121 



implied in this place, you may probably conceive that 

 the expression drives at the *t pos of Dioscorides, some 

 oriental kind oiligustrum or alcharma, which Dioscorides 

 and Pliny mention under the name of Kiirpos and Cyprus, 

 and to grow about Egypt and Ascalon, producing a 

 sweet and odorate bush of flowers, and out of which 

 was made the famous oleum cyprinum. 



But why it should be rendered camphor your judg- 

 ment cannot but doubt, who know that our camphor 

 was unknown unto the ancients, and no ingredient into 

 any composition of great antiquity : that learned men 

 long conceived it a bituminous and fossil body, and our 

 latest experience discovereth it to be the resinous 

 substance of a tree, in Borneo and China ; and that 

 the camphor that we use is a neat preparation of the 

 same. 



8. When 'tis said in Isaiah xli. " I will plant in the 

 wilderness the cedar, the shittah tree, and the myrde, 

 and the oil tree, I will set in the desert, the fir tree, 

 and the pine, and the box tree : " though some doubt 

 may be made of the shittah tree, yet all these trees 

 here mentioned being such as are ever green, you will 

 more emphatically apprehend the merciful meaning of 

 God in this mention of no fading, but always verdant 

 trees in dry and desert places. 



