1858.] REVIEWS. 411 



homestead, raising a few huts, and. living on barley or cockle 

 bread, with boiled beech-leaves for vegetables." 



The question suggested to the botanic mind by this relation 

 is, what is cockle ? In the Book of Job, the afflicted patriarch 

 writes. If he had ever eaten the fruits of his land without money, 

 or, as St. James says of the rich, that '' the hire of the labourers 

 had been kept back by fraud," "may thistles grow instead of 

 wheat, and cockles instead of barley V What was this grain or 

 seed which our translators of the Bible have rendered cockle ? 

 Was it Nigella sativa, or Gith, whence comes our Githago, a 

 plant like cockle, or bearing seed like cockle ? Sprengel, Hist. 

 Rei Herb. i. 14, says that it was the plant mentioned in Isaiah, 

 xxviii. 25, ketzach, fitches. 



Four sorts of Nigella are described by Grenier in his ' Flore de 

 France,' of which N. arvensis appears to be the most generally 

 distributed. He does not state that any of the other and rarer 

 species are either cultivated or have been ever cultivated in 

 the south of France. What is the Cockle-plant? — a nut to 

 crack ! Will some learned reader of the ' Phytologist,' when he 

 has cracked the nut, give us the kernel for the benefit of our less 

 learned readers ? 



But there is another question suggested by the quotation from 

 the " Mission of the Benedictine Order :" where was the cockle 

 procured of which the bread was made ? Was it cultivated like 

 barley, or did it grow spontaneously, as JEgilops triticoides grows 

 in Sicily, and was manufactured, as the indolent Sicilians are said 

 to manufacture their wretched substitute for wheat, by burning 

 the ears, and then, collecting the half-parched grains from the 

 ashes, ground, and baked the meal ? Was the cockle which St. 

 Bernard and his companions ate cultivated ? Was it eaten per 

 se, or was it mixed with the barley and ground up with it, as our 

 millers are said to grind up bones and less harmless materials to 

 increase the amount of their flour ? We do not expect historians 

 to answer these critico- scientific queries, but we do expect botan- 

 ists to know something of such matters, and to help us out of 

 these difficulties. 



There is, in the same number, an article "On the Formation of 

 Acids by Destructive Distillation," to which we refer such of our 

 readers as are interested in this subject. 



The 'Atlantis' contains a learned paper "On the Influence of 



