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well, therefore, take him as an authority. And he has laid this down, as the 
result of his researches, that the olive will not grow in the tropics. The land of 
Palestine and Egypt seems, indeed, to be the extreme southern limit in which 
the olive will grow. Now there is no doubt that the olive was one of the 
characteristic productions of Palestine. Moses describes it as “ a land of figs, 
of pomegranates, and of oil-olives.” There is thus no doubt that it was a 
characteristic production of Palestine in his days ; yet this it could not have 
been, if Palestine was situated then where Madras is now. Then I 
take the case of wheat and barley. In the tropics, wheat and barley 
cannot be cultivated, because of the intense heat which dries them up 
before they have time to ripen. Look, for instance, at Johnston’s “Physical 
Atlas,” where he describes the different regions in which different cereals are 
grown, and you will find wheat and barley as the productions of the coast of 
the Mediterranean, Palestine, Greece, Italy, Spain, and the north of Africa. 
But the instant you get into the tropics you have not wheat, but rice. Now 
there is no mention of rice in Palestine, but there is of wheat and barley. 
Moses says it is “ a land of wheat and barley,” but of rice he says nothing. 
Wheat and barley, however, could not have been productions of the land if it 
experienced the same climate as Madras. Then again, we are told the wheat 
and barley will especially not flourish in hot climates if the land is flat and 
near the sea. Now, what were the characteristics of the grain districts of 
Palestine % Why, fiat plains, and especially the flat plains of Philistia. Look 
at the history of Samson, and you find an allusion to this, where he tied 
firebrands to the tails of the jackals, and sent them into the standing corn of 
the Philistines. You see there the character of the place, standing corn 
growing on the land — land where it would be impossible for it to grow if 
Palestine had the same climate as Madras. But, further still, those persons 
who have been to Palestine, and examined most carefully its climate and 
productions, who are also most deeply conversant with the evidence of the 
Old Testament, tell us that so far from the evidence pointing to the climate 
of Palestine at the present day being colder than it was before, it tends the 
other way, that rather it was colder in the days of David and Moses than at 
the present time. And why ? Why, because you find more mention of snow 
in the Old Testament than we should expect to have found from the present 
experience of the inhabitants. For instance, you have such an incident as 
that recorded in the days of David, where one of his mighty men went and 
slew a lion — on a snowy day. That is the very thing, the snow is referred to 
as a natural, common occurrence, and so is frequently introduced into the 
Psalms as an emblem of glory and purity. Now in the present day, snow is 
extremely scarce in Palestine, and therefore the probability is, that instead of 
a hotter, it had formerly a colder climate than at present. Let us take 
another step yet. Upon the ravines of the Lebanon there are plain marks 
of glaciers having once swept down them, and yet we are told that the cli- 
mate formerly must have been enormously hotter than it is at the present day. 
Now when we test in this way, not by theory, but by taking a plain case 
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