JUNE 129 



name for it; they called it 'dove's dung.' It must 

 have puzzled many persons to read in 2 Kings vi. 25, 

 that the citizens of Samaria were so hard pressed when 

 Benhadad besieged them that ' an ass's head was sold 

 for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a 

 cab of dove's dung for five pieces of silver.' The ass's 

 head might be worth the money in the circumstances ; 

 who knows ? it might make a passable soup ; but dove's 

 dung to what culinary or nutritive purpose could it 

 be turned? I speak with all possible diffidence as 

 becometh one wholly unlearned in Hebrew ; and I note 

 that the revisers of the Old Testament have let the 

 passage stand with only the alteration of ' cab ' to ' kab,' 

 which scarcely touches the fringe of literal inspiration. 

 But surely the sense is that the bulbous root of 

 Ornithogalum was the substance vended, no great 

 delicacy at any time, one should say, but a trifle more 

 satisfying than guano ! 



XXXI 



Were anything wanted to deepen the gloom of a 

 bleak, dripping Whitsuntide (1907), follow- 

 ing upon the heels of a late inclement Naturalists 

 spring, nature-lovers would have found it gone 

 in the passing of the two guiding lights in natural 

 science Dr. Maxwell T. Masters and Professor Alfred 

 Newton, foremost workers in their respective fields. Dr. 

 Masters was the first to go, his death coinciding with 

 the close of the Temple flower show, the only one in 

 the series of twenty great annual festivals in which he 

 i 



