— 35 — 



kinds of palm tress, the better sort of which when 

 pressed j'ielded an excellent kind of honey, not much 

 inferior to that of the boes who wandered among the 

 oleanders and Balm of Gilcad that Alexander the Great 

 saw drop sweet fragrance. ,,It was indeed divine, when 

 snow covered the hills of Judea the people went about 

 shere clothed in linen", says Josephus. Kingfishers and 

 tun birds glanced through the alcoves, the voice of the 

 turtle dove was heard there when spring returned and 

 the bulbul warbled its praise. 



In a picture of the Betrayed by Fra Angelico painted 

 in the first half of the fifteenth century is seen a hill 

 fashioned like a hme kiln with a basin-shaped top: this 

 is the Hill of Beans that rises on the north-east of Jeru- 

 salem, and its reservoir of masonry collected the winter 

 rain; thence when summer had parched the ground, 

 water was allowed to run down and refresh the plants 

 intended for the mess of pottage: Virgil alludes to this- 

 custom. One day near the Hill of Beans I saw some 

 bees, which Mr. Edward Saunders pronounced to be 

 a variety of the common Hive Bee, they were smaller 

 than those kept in England, with whiter hair and longer 

 antennae, Canon Tristram says that these are the kind 

 Latreille called faciata. Sir Gardener Wilkinson found 

 them to be the ordinary hive bee in Egypt, which the 

 Eeverend W. Kirby remarks must have been kept ages 

 before our brown bees. Whether these blond bees produced 

 the honey the rocks yielded and the trees distilled, or 

 whether' they were the property of a gentleman who had 

 his hives brought over from BethleJiem to derive the 

 benefit of the purple- flowering Poterium spinosum that 

 replaces the heath on the hills south of the Lebanon, 

 I am at a loss to conjecture. Perhaps their elongate 

 organs of scent are adapted to appreciate the mingled 

 insence of Ononis natrix, Heliotropium rotundifolium 

 and Teucrium rosmarinifolium, that confers on the 

 native honey the flavour of that of Hybla or Hymettus, 

 but anyone expecting to breathe all the unguents of the 

 merchant on the hills of Judea would be mournfully 

 disappointed; before I came to the lodging house I was 

 told a Mr. Hughes, well known at Jerusalem, established 

 a laboratory there to discover an appropriate essence 

 for olive oil soap, but I am not aware of any startling 

 results. 



This was not a year of wonder ; when the sea breeze 

 ceases and while the sirocco breathes from the east, 

 Pharaoh's Vultures, Neophron percnopterus, that look 

 like white and black crows, wing to the carrion with open 

 beak, and pillars of dust come whirling uj) from the 

 sandy desert. The time to sound the trumpet on Zion 

 had not come and I never saw less injury done by thé 

 insect population, save that in dusty corners of the 

 vineyard the leaves were drilled with shot holes cut out 

 by the caterpillar of the little coppery-black burnet moth, 

 Ino Ampelophaga, which I can only imagine to be the 

 shearing or bending palmerworm, the Gazom of the 

 prophet Joel; I saw no other but, a solitary one with a 

 horn that became a pretty sphinx moth, Chaerocampa 

 celerio. When Amos laments; „I have smitten you 

 with blasting and mildew, or Jerakon, the multitude of 

 your gardens and your fig trees and your olive trees hath 

 the palmerworm devoured", and Haggai gives the precee- 

 dence of the hail to the mildew: Thomson comes to the 

 conclusion they are alluding to the silvery grey mould 

 that some years destroys the grapes and the vintage. 

 The olive stumps the camels brought to the door for 

 firiwcod contained the grubs of the long-antemied I 

 Cerambyx heros and a Buprestid beetle, but no one [ 

 fearful of an earthquake sat up in the summer evenings ! 

 to hear the stone cry out of the wall and the coleopteren I 



reply in the timber; indeed Judea in historical times has 

 not suffered from seismic shocks .to the same extent as 

 the boi'ders of the Sea of Galilee situated on the edge 

 of the blue-black lava of t?ie Hauran, where Nazareth 

 hangs on th(^ crest of an outlying volcano: Josephus 

 could only call to mind one exceptionally severe earthquake, 

 that apparently of B. C. 81 , the year of the naval battle 

 of Antium, when houses fell and there was a destruction 

 of cattle. It is in winter that the thunder peals over 

 Zion — the Eomans recognised a god of thunder. 



When making a tour of the garden in the morning 

 sunshine I saw an Acridium tartaricum fly out of the 

 Pepper Tree, and as I subsequently saw a newly emerged 

 individual with limp wings clinging to a young roadside 

 plane in the suburbs of Brindisi on the seventeenth of 

 September, I am under an impression that it passes the 

 winter in the mature state. It is the largest Mediter- 

 ranean locust and this and its bush frequenting habit 

 proclaim it to be the Gob Gobay, or Great Grasshopper 

 of the prophet Nahum, that he names an Assyrian 

 captain. It must have been at this moment a man crying 

 Toot, or mulberries, came to the door; the dogs and cats 

 had licked the plate clean and, noticing his opportunity, 

 he went off with it: presently he reappeared saying that 

 another man had stolen the same and that he had gone 

 to the rescue. Naturally he wished to be rewarded: it 

 was considered a test of faith to believe that if you had 

 confidence in the command the sycamine tree would 

 be plucked up and cast into the sea; and decision of 

 character is essential in such circumstances. 



At the close of the summer, when the watch dogs 

 lay panting at the door and pained with thirst devoured 

 the herbage and wall pellitory, Jerusalem became as it 

 were a cauldron among the hills, where all was glowing 

 save the icy sea wind that howled in gusts ; black haired 

 goats strayed over hill and dale browsing on sticks and 

 straws, and what time the siesta invited to slumber, 

 young men saw visions and old men dreamed dreams, 

 the herbage lay sere except where here and there a tuft 

 of Bermuda grass retained its green, the sky was brass 

 and the earth iron, the red clay was baked and no insects 

 were stirring save a dusky winged fly,' Anthrax suffusa, 

 that skimmed over its surface like the image of death. 

 The prickly burrs of the Daucus aureus covered the 

 garments of the pedestrian and all was barren from Dan 

 unto Beersheba. In the middle of August the wind 

 veered north and the heat became burning. I then found 

 myself in the narrow gorge of dubious name that runs 

 down to the muddy track of the Kedron. Under the south- 

 eastern angle of the town wall I found potsherds and on 

 the opposite side a steep bank rose up atjruptly. ,,I 

 clambered up it and read over the entrance to a sepulchre, 

 ,,Tees Agias Siono" ; but Jerusalem had long been levelled. 

 I had promised to take my landlady's American servant 

 girl round the sites and I should feel ashamed to bring 

 her here and tell her that David's golden throne lay 

 buried under the town ramparts. A Little Owl was flying 

 among the pleasant shade of the olive trees that in places 

 are hoarj' with red berried mistletoe; and, near at hand, 

 I saw what seemed to be a blush white rose with purple 

 anthers, which proved to be the flower of the prickly 

 hyssop, Capparis spinosa, that not long afterwards was 

 denuded of its leaves by the caterpillars of the common 

 African and Asiatic white butterfly, Pieris mesentina. 

 Then when the refreshing showers of autumn followed 

 on the fervid heat the more beautiful melon coloured 

 Idmais Fausta was fluttering everywhere on the Temple 

 area. I well remember exciting chases to capture it, 

 when arab boys shouted Kwager! and hurled stones, the 

 shejjherd boy wielded his club to dash out my brains. 



