'The Expedition for the survey of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, carried on by order of the British government, in the years 1835, 1836, and 1837; preceded by geographical and historical notices of the regions situated between the rivers Nile and Indus. In four volumes. With fourteen maps and charts, and embellished with ninety-seven plates, besides numerous wood-cuts. Volume the first.' [‎537] (628/905)

CHAP. XXI.]
VEGETABLES.
537
employed by the amateurs of the chace; while in almost every
ruin throughout the country a covey of gray partridges may Birds,
be flushed, and one or two jackals started. Flocks of a kind
of pigeon-quail called Katta, 1 and a green parrot, noticed by
Diodorus Siculus, 2 abound in the spring. The eagles, vultures,
falcons, owls, and other birds, do not differ from those of
Aleppo; nor is that scourge of the husbandman, the locust,
wanting as the grain advances.
The extremes of temperature experienced in this country Trees,
give a corresponding variety of vegetable productions. Besides
the trees already enumerated in the 18th chapter, there are
many others—as the cedar, the butm, or wild pistachio, 3 the
nopal, a kind of broom of large size, the kharub, or locust-tree, 4
the date, the defle, 5 the orange, the lemon, the fig, and the Fmits
pomegranate. Almonds and other common fruits, as grapes and
olives, are more flourishing in the central and southern than
in the northern parts of Syria. The sweet-honied reed—the
well known sugar-cane—is still grown where the Crusaders
found it in the eleventh century. 6 Indigo is cultivated on the
shores of the Dead Sea, and in some places along the Jordan ;
and cochineal has recently been introduced about Tripoli. At
the latter place, and around Beirut as well as Damascus, and in
the intervening districts of the Lebanon, silk is produced,
but with a proportion of hemp, tobacco, and occasionally in
some few places a little cotton. The grains cultivated in central and grain.
.Syria and Palestine are wheat, dhurrah, barley, juwar, 7 Indian
corn and sesame; and, besides artichokes, melons, pumpkins,
&c., the ada, an excellent kind of lentile, the badintshaus, or
egg-plant, with the other vegetables of northern Syria, are cul
tivated. The grain harvest, which is the principal one, takes
place at the end of May or early in June ; later, the hummus,
a kind of vetch, comes in with other crops, but on a small
scale; for apathy, the besetting sin of the Turk, causes the
quantity, particularly of grain, to be regulated by the actual
Understood to be the Tetrao A1 Katta.
6 Mill's Hist, of the Crusades, vol. I., p. 238.
VOL. I.
Lib. II., cap. xxix.
The Ceratonia siliqua of Linnaeus.
8 Pistacea terebinthus.
5 Solanum furiosum.
5. 7 Sorghum vulgar.
3 7