PLANTS IN SCRIPTURE 129 



bottom, and somewhat repandous, or inverted at the 

 top, doth handsomely illustrate the comparison. 



But that the lily of the valley, mentioned in the 

 Canticles, " I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of 

 the valley," is that vegetable which passeth under the 

 same name with us, that is, lilium convalfium, or the 

 May lily, you will more hardly believe, who know 

 with what insatisfaction the most learned botanists 

 reduce that plant unto any described by the ancients ; 

 that Anguillara will have it to be the ananthe of 

 Athenjeus, Cordus, the pothos of Theophrastus, and 

 Lobelius, that the Greeks had not described it ; who 

 find not six leaves in the flower, agreeably to all lilies, 

 but only six small divisions in the flower, who find it 

 also to have a single, and no bulbous root, nor leaves 

 shooting about the bottom, nor the stalk round, but 

 angular. And that the learned Bauhinus hath not 

 placed it in the classis of lilies, but nervifolious 

 plants. 



21. It is said in the Song of Solomon, that " The 

 vines with the tender grape give a good smell." That 

 the flowers of the vine should be emphatically noted 

 to give a pleasant smell seems hard unto our northern 

 nostrils, which discover not such odours, and smell 



K 



