PLA.NTS OF THE BIBLE. 



Ill 



Mr. Arthur W. Sutton said that he would like to be allowed 

 to second the vote of thanks to Dr. Rendle for the extremely 

 interesting paper he had read. It was a very special pleasure to 

 join in welcoming Dr. Rendle to the Victoria Institute. He had 

 long known Dr. Rendle in the Linnean Society, and in other circles 

 where the pursuit of science linked together those whose aim it was 

 to discover more and more of the hidden wonders of Nature, and 

 this increased the pleasure of meeting Dr. Rendle on an occasion 

 like the present at the Victoria Institute, where so many men of 

 science have joined with the Institute in bringing to bear upon 

 Bible records the result of their researches. 



Mr. Sutton mentioned that he had had the privilege of visiting 

 Palestine and Syria many times, and the subject of Dr. Rendle's 

 paper, therefore, was of peculiar interest to him. Knowing 

 Palestine so well himself by personal observation, it struck him as 

 a very remarkable fact that Dr. Rendle had obtained so intimate 

 and accurate a knowledge of the country, with its principal features 

 and characteristics, and more especially its flora, without having 

 travelled there himself. 



It was a noticeable feature of Dr. Rendle's paper that, although 

 in a few cases, and some of these very interesting cases, it was 

 suggested that a more accurate translation would have given a 

 different meaning to that with which we are familiar, yet the paper 

 generally afforded very substantial and confirmatory evidence of 

 the accuracy of Holy Scripture. 



Referring to the olive groves of Palestine, and the Scriptural 

 reference to " wild olives," and " good olives," and the fact that 

 the productiveness of these olive groves depended upon the wild 

 olive being grafted with the good olive, Mr. Sutton asked Dr. Rendle 

 if he could offer any suggestion as to where the Hebrews, or their 

 predecessors in the country, could in the first place have obtained the 

 good olives for the purpose of grafting. Dr. Rendle, in reply, said he 

 was decidedly of the opinion that the good olive must have been culti- 

 vated in Palestine before the advent of the Israelites, but as to the 

 source from which it originally came there was at present no certain 

 information, nor was it possible to say whether the good olive had 

 been evolved or developed by any method of cultivation from the 

 wild olive indigenous to the country. 



I 



