237 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, July 14, 1857. 
No. 3. Round-head Broom, filled with Birch and Heath, 
for stables and common use. 
No. 3. 
{To be continued.') 
“THE LILIES OF THE FIELD.” 
The most remarkable contribution that has been sent 
to the Experimental Garden is what is said to be the 
“Lily of the field” referred to by our Saviour in the 
sermon on the Mount. It has just flowered in a neigh¬ 
bouring garden, and turns out to be Lilium candidum , 
the white Lily of our gardens, which the unlearned in 
botany, from Dublin to Damascus, believe to be the 
true Lily of Scripture; but botanists in all parts of 
Europe reject that opinion, because the Holy Land has 
been botanised over and over again, from Dan to Beer- 
sheba, without a white Lily being met with in a wild 
state. All the researches of science have hitherto failed 
in finding in the Old World a native country for the 
white Lily, and were it not that a figure of it growing 
in a vase appears in an engraving of the Annunciation, 
by Martin Schongauer, about the year 1480, or a dozen 
years previous to Columbus’s first voyage, botanists in 
Europe would assign the New World as the only native 
place of the Lilium candidum, Mr. Pentland having found 
it growing wild in Cusco, in the highlands of Peru, and 
Mr. Skinner met with it in Guatemala, also in the wild 
state. 
It is a native of Syria, however, and it is as likely as 
not that the Spaniards introduced it to America, where, 
in the lapse of time, it might escape from cultivation 
and appear as a native plant. The worst weed in the 
market gardens from Richmond to Mortlake is Galin- 
sogea parviflora, a Mexican plant which escaped from 
Kew, and, without knowing its history, a botanist might 
take it for a native of Surrey. Mr. Kinghorn’s new 
nursery on the Sheen road out of Richmond was 
perfectly covered with this Mexican weed when he took 
possession. There are hundreds of such instances on 
record from all parts of the world. That the white Lily 
is a native of the Old World is proved by the engraving 
aforesaid, and that it grows wild, “ and covers the steep 
sides of the valleys, and fills the air with its fragrance” 
on the north slopes of the Lebanon range, we have the 
testimony of one of the most remarkable men in all 
Syria, a Maronite M.D. with a diploma from London, 
where he studied not long since. He was a visitor at 
the Experimental, and is well known to many readers 
of The Cottage Gaedeneii hereabouts, and the fol¬ 
lowing biographical sketch of him, as the discoverer of 
the native place of the white Lily, is well worthy of 
insertion in such a work as this:— 
Abdallah Asmar, native of Mount Lebanon, left his 
country in 1841 to gain European knowledge, and after 
several years’ residence in England, pursuing the study of 
medicine at St. George’s hospital, he returned to live among 
his country people, the Maronites of the Lebanon, it always 
having been his object to practise his healing art among 
those poor mountaineers, who never had before the blessing 
of a resident doctor in their district, hundreds dying every 
year from the mere want of bleeding, or losing their eyesight 
for lack of the simplest remedies. On Abdallah’s first arrival 
in his native village of Zook-el-kharab (three hours’journey 
from Beyrout), he was an object of intense curiosity and 
some suspicion. There was no end of the speculations both 
as to the quantity of European gold in his trunk and magic 
lore in his head. The Maronite ladies came to petition him 
to write them charms, which they were sure would bring 
under their control the source of some true love that did 
not run smooth; the sick would not trouble themselves to 
desci'ibe their symptoms—they must be already known to the 
great Anglo-Syrian physician. The notion of a doctor’s fee 
in the Lebanon did not quite accord with Abdallah’s newly- 
acquired English practice ; it was the patient who expected 
to receive it for the favour he did his medical adviser in 
swallowing his medicines, and only in case of a decided cure 
was payment thought necessary at all: even then the poor 
mountaineer was often reduced to say, “ I pay you my 
thanks.” Abdallah has returned to his native land a firm 
Protestant, and therefore neither patriarch, nor bishop, nor 
the richer inhabitants would allow the heretic hand to touch 
their pulse, be they in ever so great extremity. Many a 
tempting offer has he had of patronage and emolument if 
he will but return to the bosom of the Roman Catholic 
Church. The patriarch has even promised to build him a 
hospital; but he remains firm to his Protestant principles, 
and therefore lives on in his poverty. 
Abdallah Asmar seems to have been possessed with a thirst 
for knowledge from the age of eight years. He relates how as 
ahoy he used to be taken down to Beyrout by his father, and 
how he stared with wonder at the Franks bustling along the 
streets in their tight-fitting clothes, and would ask him how 
they came to be sewn on them, and if they never took them off; 
but, however grotesque the outward man appeared to him, 
he felt sure those turbanless heads contained vast know¬ 
ledge, and he longed to visit their wonderful country, where 
alone he could find it. This desire grew with his growth 
and strengthened with his strength, and he never rested till 
he accomplished it. After finishing his education at the 
Maronite college of Ain TVarkha in the Lebanon, he was 
sent at the age of seventeen, as one of the most eligible of 
the students, to superintend the college of the same order 
at Aleppo. He lived for ten years in the house of the 
patriarch in that city, at the end of which time he fell in 
with the American missionary, Mr. Bedell, and, after some 
conversation with him, consented to assist in the secret 
distribution of the Bible in Aleppo. To Mr. Bedell he 
opened his heart, and expressed the earnest desire he felt 
to drink at the fount of knowledge in more enlightened 
lands. He was not only encouraged in this idea by the 
earnest missionary, but assisted by funds sufficient to help 
him as far as Nice on his way. There he found, by letters 
of recommendation, other kind friends who sent him on to 
London. 
It was on a foggy day in the montli of February, the 
snow deep on the ground, that the Maronite of the Libanus 
found himself threading the streets of our metropolis in 
