THE HYSSOP OF THE ANCIENTS. 
253 
It is frequently mentioned in Sacred History, where some of the uses to which it 
was formerly applied are described, and from which we must naturally conclude that 
the plant grew wild in the parts where the persons using it were then located. 
The first mention of the plant in Sacred History is in connection with the insti- 
tution of the Passover, where the Israelites were commanded to take a bunch of the 
herb, and with it sprinkle the blood of the Paschal Lamb upon the lintels and posts 
of their doors. See Exodus, c. xii., v. 22. It was also used by the Jewish Priests 
in their ceremonies of cleansing persons afflicted with leprosy, and for purifying the 
houses of lepers. See Leviticus, c. xiv., v. 4, 6, and 52, and Numbers, c. xix., 
V. 5. To this use allusion is made in Hebrews, c. ix., v. 19, and in Psalm xli., v. 2. 
In 1 Kings, c. iv., v. 23, it is mentioned incidentally, as a plant “ which groweth 
out of the wall,” and from its connection there, conveys the idea of a minute herb, 
in opposition to the Cedar of Lebanon, as a timber tree. The same plant is also 
supposed to be mentioned in the Gospel of St. John, c. xix,, v. 29. Pliny, too, in 
his writings, mentions it as not good for the stomach : he says the Romans used it 
with figs, as a purgative ; with honey as an emetic, and that they also made it into a 
plaister, with other herbs, as a cure for the sting of venomous reptiles. The 
situations in which it grew wild, he mentions, as Mount Taurus in Cilicia, in Pam- 
phylia, and in Smyrna, localities in which the Hyssop of our gardens has never, that 
we are aware of, been discovered. 
Various opinions have been mooted by writers and travellers respecting the 
species of plant thus referred to in history, and which was so highly prized. Some 
have conjectured, from the incidental notice of it, given in the Book of Kings, that 
it was a minute species of moss ; and as the Gymnostomum truncatulum (a), grows 
abundantly on the walls and ruins about Jerusalem, and also in Lower Egypt, and 
the Desert of Sinai, it has been selected as a very probable kind for the true Hyssop. 
The plant is very minute and curious, and seems to agree with the idea conveyed in 
I Kings, where Solomon is mentioned as having written on plants, from the “ cedar 
of Lebanon to the Hyssop that groweth out of the wall ; ” apparently pointing 
to the two extremes of the vegetable creation. 
Others, for the same reasons, have supposed another species of moss to be the 
true Hyssop ; it is called T^'ichostomum aciculare (b), and, like the last, it is indi- 
genous to Britain, but is found abundantly in all the localities where the ancient 
Hyssop is recorded as growing. 
The objections advanced against these species of moss are, that their Arabic 
names do not in any respect favour the supposition ; nor do they possess any of 
those medicinal properties, attributed to the Jewish Ezob. 
A minute species of fern also has been selected ; but the same objections apply 
here as to mosses. 
Others have thought the Judaean wormwood (Artemesia Judaica) a likely plant. 
It is a little evergreen shrub, growing from a foot to eighteen inches high, in all the 
countries where the true Hyssop must have grown ; but the habits do not agree 
