156 
PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
Europe, the Levant, and Syria, and is largely cultivated for its 
fruit. 1 These are like Beans, full of sweet pulp, and are given 
in Spain and other southern countries to horses, pigs, and 
cattle, and they are occasionally imported into England for the 
same purpose. The Carob was cultivated in England before 
Shakespeare’s time. “ They grow not in this countrie,” says 
Lyte, “ yet, for all that, they be sometimes in the gardens of 
some diligent Herboristes, but they be so small shrubbes that 
they can neither bring forth flowers nor fruite.” It was also 
grown by Gerard, and Shakespeare may have seen it; but it is 
now very seldom seen in any collection, though the name is 
preserved among us, as the jeweller’s carat weight is said to 
have derived its name from the Carob Beans, which were used 
for weighing small objects. 
The origin of the tree being called Locust is a little curious. 
Readers of the New Testament, ignorant of Eastern customs, 
could not understand that St. John could feed on the insect 
locust, which, however, is now known to be a common and 
acceptable article of food, so they looked about for some 
solution of their difficulty, and decided that the Locusts were 
the tender shoots of the Carob tree, and that the wild honey 
was the luscious juice of the Carob fruit. Having got so far 
it was easy to go farther, and so the Carob soon got the names 
of St. John’s Bread and St. John’s Beans, and the monks of 
the desert showed the very trees by which St. John’s life was 
supported. But though the Carob tree did not produce the 
locusts on which St. John fed, there is little or no doubt that 
“ the husks which the swine did eat,” and which the Prodigal 
Son longed for, were the produce of the Carob tree. 
1 Pods of the Carob tree were found in a house at Pompeii. For an 
account of the uses of the Locust as an article of food, both in ancient 
and modem times, see Hogg’s “ Classical Plants of Sicily,” p. 114. 
