THE ROSE 233 



of the blood of the Saviour who " died that we may 

 live/' It is, however, generally agreed that the 

 word rendered rose (Cant. ii. 1 ; Isa. xxxv. 1), 

 rather represents some bulbous plant, probably the 

 tulip, which abounds at the present day in Judsea, 

 while the rose is stated by recent travellers to be 

 unknown in the plains of Sharon. The Hebrew 

 name too, khabatsaleth, the root of which word 

 (bazal, or batsal), signifies an onion, or coated bulb, 

 like the Arabic basal, confirms this conjecture, and 

 sufficiently proves it not to "be a rose." The same 

 plant, the tulip, appears to be the "lily" of the 

 New Testament, of which our Saviour says that 

 "Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like 

 one of these;" the expression "lilies" being ap- 

 plied in the sense of " flowers," as is often the case, 

 like the word " rose " in Persian, Arabic, and other 

 languages, as I have before stated. 



Kitto mentions " white, damask, yellow, and ever- 

 green " roses as flourishing in Palestine ; and they 

 do grow profusely in gardens there ; but these bear 

 no relationship to the " rose " of the Bible. And 

 the plant now called the " rose of Jericho " is the 

 anastdlica hlerochuntica. 



There is a strange old idea, not yet wholly 

 extinct, to which even the over-credulous Gerarde, 

 speaking experimentally, gives the most emphatic 

 contradiction, namely, that the yellow rose is pro- 

 duced by grafting a rose-spray on the yellow broom ! 

 a thing, as he observes, contrary to the principle, 

 " naturae sequitur semina quodque suse." 



Though Egypt does not abound in roses, like 



