1299 FLORA OF PALESTINE AND SYRIA. 
barley flourish, and the vine attains the most perfect devel- 
opment. The herbaceous flora of these two regions is simi- 
lar in type, except that as we rise on the mountain sides the 
Tetragontheca and Stachys, and Squill and Pancratium of 
the plains begin to yield to the thorny mountain species of 
Astragalus, and Tragacanth, and Eupigium, and the aro- 
matic Origanums and Teucriums. 
III. A third region comprises a small part of Cole Syria, 
near the head waters of the Litany and Orontes, with the 
plain east of Damascus and Hums. The soil of this region . 
is thin, being fit only for the production of grasses and 
thorny herbs, the scanty pasture of the Arab's flocks and 
herds. Here grow Centaurea dumulosa, and Delphinium 
anthoroides, and many Astragali and other Leguminose, 
while not a solitary tree, or even shrub, enlivens the dreary 
landscape. It is the type of those great waterless plains, 
which, for a short space, interrupted by the fertile district 
of Mesopotamia, extend eastward through Persia to the 
great desert of Cobi. 
IV. The fourth of these regions is from the height of 4000 
feet on Lebanon and Hermon, to their snow clad summits. 
Here the scanty remains of their once extensive forests of 
cedar and oak, and pine, end at an elevation of 6000 feet 
above the sea, and for the remaining 4000 feet of naked 
rock, we have left such treelets as the Cotoneaster, and Pru- 
nus prostratas, and Daphne oleoides, while the herbaceous 
flora is represented in the lower regions by Astragalus lana- 
tus, Alyssum montanum, and Ranunculus demissus and 
Viola ebracteolata, and higher up by hemispherical bogs of a 
species of Astragalus, Onobrychys tragacanthus and Acantho- 
limon Libanoticum, while on the extreme summit of Lebanon 
we find Ucia canescens, and of Hermon, Pyrethrum densum. 
A fifth region might be enumerated, viz., the -plain about 
Jericho, in which, owing to the depth of its surface below 
the sea, about 1300 feet, and the reflected glare of the sun 
from the mountains and surface of the Dead Sea, the heat | 

