An Account of Plants, 8pc. 



reason, called Red Bud. These buds are gathered and used 

 with other raw vegetables, by the Greeks and Turks, in salads, 

 to which they give an agreeable colour and taste. As it is a 

 very beautiful tree in all its stages, it is every where planted, 

 and in spring gives a ruddy hue to the shores of the Bos- 

 phorus. It is hardy, and bears well the winter of this climate, 

 which, so near the Black sea, is sometimes very severe. 



Ceratonia Siliqua. 

 This tree is described by Dioscorides* and Pliny,+ and 

 was well known to the ancients. I found it in great abun- 

 dance at Malta, where it is almost the only tree that grows, 

 relieving the irksome sameness of the white stone enclosures 

 with its dark foliage. It grows also in the islands of the 

 Archipelago, but never in the immediate vicinity of Constan- 

 tinople. The substance of the pod is thick and pulpy, re- 

 markably sweet and nutritious, and hence it has always been 

 an article of food in these countries. Pliny calls it Siliqua 

 pr&dulcis.\ At the present day it is sent from Palestine to 

 Alexandria in ship loads, and from thence over the Mediter- 

 ranean, and as far as Constantinople, where it is sold in all the 

 shops. It resembles manna in taste and consistence, and is 

 sometimes used as sugar to preserve other substances. But 

 the circumstance that has rendered it famous, is the contro- 

 versy whether it was not the real food of St. John in the wil- 

 derness. Some of the Fathers \ assert that the catphe or locusts 



* Lib.i. cap. 158. edit. Sarraceni. 



f Hist. Nat. Lib. xv. cap. 24. edit. Hardouini. 

 > + Isidore > &c. oj ux^eg, £ 5 It^sto, Zv $»« 6 J<™, & r,v 5? oUvrctt 



dxtfiMns /3oTov«iy $ qutuv. T.x.A. S. Isid. Pelus. Ep. 132. 



