PLANTS OF THE BIBLE. 



101 



point to wliich I should like to refer before I begin. My lecture 

 is announced as being illustrated by lantern slides, and so it is. 

 Col. Mackinlay went all over tbe place trying to obtain some, 

 to these I have added a few of my own, and will supplement 

 them with drawings and specimens, so if you will regard 

 this as rather a scratch lecture I think perhaps we shall spend 

 an interesting and instructive hour together. 



If we are really to understand the natural history of Palestine, 

 we must understand the country itself. You have not a map 

 here, so I have had to draw roughly a chart on the boarc', 

 which represents Palestine. At the top we have the Lebanon 

 Range. Here is the valley of the Jordan, down the centre. 

 Then there are two parallel ranges of mountains, the Lebanon 

 and on the other side the Anti-Lebanon. The Lebanon runs from 

 the north, and melts away in the hill comitry in the north of 

 Galilee. My drawing is not quite good, but it illustrates my 

 point. The Lebanon breaks away into the hilly country of North 

 Galilee ; then spreads into the hilly country of Southern Galilee, 

 until near Nazareth we get the Plain of Esdraelon. 



South of this it rises again into the hilly country of Samaria, 

 which continues in hills with valleys intervening, through Ephraim, 

 Benjamin and Judah to the south of Hebron. Thus we have 

 a mountainous or hilly country extending from Lebanon in tha 

 north until we get to Hebron. Below Hebron the hill country 

 sinks into a wide region of broad valleys suitable for pasture, 

 which gradually pass into the wilderness of Paran, a \ast 

 limestone plateau separated by a sandy desert from the granite 

 mass of Sinai. The western shore is fringed by a succession 

 of plains, narrower in the north, but broadening down to 

 Philistia and passing into the desert. 



A parallel range, the Anti-Lebanon, culminates in Mount 

 Hermon, and the mountains continue as the trans-Jordanic 

 chain, passing into the Mounts of Gilead and Moab. The hills 

 which rise to the east gradually lose themselves in the great 

 Eastern Desert. The river Jordan, after passing through the 

 waters of Lake Merom, rapidly descends to the Sea of Galilee, 

 and then winds tortuously in a deepening valley between its 

 lower terraces, which form the Plain of the Jordan, rarely 

 more than two or three miles wide. It occupies about two 

 hundred miles in passing through a distance of about sixty mites. 

 The valley then gradually widens, and runs between narrow 

 terraces. 



