JONAH iv. 6, 7.

"And the Lord God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head... So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered."

"The water-melon serves the Egyptians for meat, drink, and physic. It is eaten in abundance during the season, even by the richer sort of people; but the common people scarcely eat anything else, and account this the best time of the year, as they are obliged to put up with worse fare at other seasons. They eat them with bread. This fruit likewise serves them for drink, the juice being most refreshing to these poor creatures; and they have less need of water than if they lived on more substantial food in this burning climate. This fruit also affords physic; but it is not every kind of melon that answers this end. There is a variety softer and more pulpy than the common sort, and not so plentiful; when this is very ripe and almost putrid, they hollow out part of it, gather the juice there collected, and mixing it with rose-water and a little sugar, administer it in burning fevers, being the only medicine the common people use in such distempers."-HASSELQUIST.

The bottle-gourd is eaten by the Arabs, boiled with vinegar. Sometimes they stuff it with meat and rice, and boil it like a pudding. Several sorts of cucumbers are cultivated in Palestine. The shell of the gourd is often used as a water-vessel.

"The musk-melon is a far greater favourite among the Persians than the water-melon....The melon-vines are hoed (if we may so speak) with a spade, the American hoe having no place among the farming implements of Persia. The musk-melon, at the size of a walnut, is folded up in a leaf from its own vine, and covered over with a thin layer of earth, perhaps to protect it from worms, but more especially, to render the

rind thin, and the fruit sweet. All but two or three of the blows are stripped from each vine, which then yields as many melons. As it grows, it throws off the layer of earth, and the process of covering it is twice more repeated. As it advances it is raised up from its bed and placed upon the ridge, where it rapidly ripens under the alternate night-chills and the hot sun of the clear summer sky. Melons are eaten not only in their season; they are also...kept fresh during most of the winter. For an early crop, the soil is laid out in patches or beds, which are sprinkled over with coarse sand or gravel, to keep the earth warm and preserve it from baking during the rains of spring. Soil thus prepared, is for obvious reasons not hoed (spaded) but weeded, should occasion require. A shelter is effected in the melonfields, by setting four poles in the earth, binding small rafters across their tops, and covering the frail platform with limbs cut from the poplars and willows on the water-courses, whose leaves, under the scorching sun, soon dry. (This is probably) the lodge, in the garden of cucumbers, which is, in Scripture, made the emblem of Jerusalem in her desolation. This shelter is constantly occupied, in the season of fruit, by the owners, who gather what is ripe during the day, and guard the field from depredations by night."-PERKIN's Residence in Persia, p. 428.

"Returning in the evening through fields of melons, we disturbed the 'keepers of a field,"* the same as those mentioned by the prophet. A rude shed made of four upright poles, that supported a covering of twined branches, protected from the weather an old decrepit Arab, who sat watching against any intrusion that might be made by man or beast upon his field."-Mission to the Jews.

"There were along the river (the Nile) a great many water-melons, cucumbers, and other vegetables. It reminded me of the complaint of Israel in the wilderness,

* Jer. iv. 17.

that they were deprived of the melons and cucumbers of Egypt. Considerable districts lay along the edge of the water, and only a few feet above it, and on them the vegetables above-named, and many others, were raised in great numbers. There was usually a small place in these garden-spots built to protect a person from the rain; whose office it is to prevent pillage, and sell the vegetables to boatmen and passengers."-PAXTON's Letters, p. 248.

There are two kinds of gourds, distinguished for their bitterness, either of which may have been that used by Elisha. The first is called coloquintida, and produces the valuable medicine known by that name. Robinson found this near mount Sinai at the latter end of March, when "its yellow fruit was ripe." It is called in English, "the little cucumber." Its tendrils run over a great extent of ground, sometimes several miles, and the gourds are so numerous, as to be crushed under the

feet of the passengers, whether men or animals. The dry gourd, when crushed, discharges the valuable drug contained in it, in the form of a powder.

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"The coloquintida grows in great abundance...it is used by the Arabs to make tinder, by the following pro-after roasting the root in the ashes, they wrap it in a wetted rag of cotton cloth, they then beat it between two stones, by which means the juice of the fruit is expressed, and absorbed by the rag, which is dyed by it of a dirty blue; the rag is then dried in the sun, and ignites with the slightest spark of fire."-BURCKHARDT'S Syria, &c., p. 449.

The second sort of gourd is the globe, or prophet's gourd. It is quite as bitter as the coloquintida, and unpleasant to the smell. It is covered with soft prickles.

"This is a totally different plant-and seems, with little doubt, to have been the castor-oil-nut tree. This plant is liable to very sudden decay. Its broad tender

leaves afford a delicious shade, and the oil expressed from its seeds was used by the ancients as particularly pleasant for burning, and the Jews still use it for their Sabbath lamps, it being one of the five kinds pointed out by their traditions. Its medicinal virtues appear to be unknown."-See Scripture Herbal, pp. 181-183.

CUMMIN.

ISAIAH XXviii. 25, 27.

"Doth he not scatter abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin."

"For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart-wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod."

This plant is cultivated on account of its seeds, which are a valuable remedy for the ulcers, &c. arising in cattle from the bites of insects. It was threshed out with a rod, which was not the usual way of threshing among the Jews; but in Malta, the seeds are beaten out now in the same way. The plant itself is something like fennel, and the taste of the seeds is warm, and rather bitter. Sometimes they are put into cheese and bread, and are thought a good stomachic.