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ready to imagine no other important use of oil but for eating, but they found life would be inelegant without anointing.

Some of their ointments were extremely pre-: cious such was the composition with, which the head of our LORD was anointed." But a slight infusion of some of their own country. flowers was sufficient to give their hair a very agreeable scent. So Hasselquist tells us, the Egyptians put the flowers of the tuberose into sweet oil, and by this means give the oil a most excellent smell, scarcely inferior to oil of jessamine;" and in another place, that he found jessamine growing in the Holy Land, besides other fragrant plants.

OBSERVATION XI.

Of the Dryness of the Ground previous to the

Autumnal Rains.

THE description that Sir J. Chardin gives us in his MSS. of the state of these countries, with respect to the cracking of the earth, before the autumnal rains fell, is so lively a comment on Jer. xiv. 4, Because the ground is chapt, for there was no rain in the earth, the plough-men were ashamed, that I beg leave to introduce it here as a distinct observation.

The lands of the East, he says, in a note on Ps. cxliii. 6, which the great dryness there

Matt. xxvi. 7.

" P. 267

• P. 134.

causes to crack, are the ground of this figure, which is certainly extremely beautiful; for these dry lands have chinks too deep for a person to see to the bottom of this may be observed in the Indies more than any where, a little before the rains fall, and wherever the lands are rich and hard.

The Prophet's speaking of plough-men shews that he is speaking of the autumnal state of those countries; and if the cracks are so deep from the common dryness of their summers, what must they be when the rains are withheld beyond the usual time, which is the case Jeremiah is referring to?

OBSERVATION XII.

Curious Account of certain Kinds of Seeds, mentioned by Isaiah, chap. xxviii. 25, 26.

THE Septuagint not only supposes that four sorts of grain, or seeds of the larger and harder kind, are mentioned in a passage of Isaiah: but St. Jerom, who tells us this in his Commentary on that Prophet, represents the Hebrew as saying the same thing. Jerom frequently represents the Septuagint translation as differing from the original Hebrew; but here he supposes there is no difference between them. This leads us to various reflections:

? Chap. xxviii. 25, 28.

Even the vulgar Latin, which has undergone many supposed corrections, in order to make it more perfectly

some perfectly coinciding with the design of these papers; others of a different nature."

In the first place it shows, that there has been a variation in the Hebrew copies since the days of Jerom. In this case the variation is of no great moment; it is however a variation. This, before the publications of Dr. Kennicott, would, probably, have been warmly contested; but will be more easily admitted now.

Secondly, The corruption is not greater than has been observed in some other cases.

(Nisman, the appointed,) is put, it seems, for (vedochan,) which signifies, and millet. The letters sufficiently resemble each. other to admit of this change.

Thirdly, The adding the word nisman appointed, to the barley the husbandman sows, seems to be very useless here; but if we understand the word to have been originally millet, it is a very good addition to the examples that the Prophet gives, of the wisdom the Gon of nature has been pleased to bestow on the husbandman in tilling the ground, so that he correspond with the modern Hebrew copies, yet retains the mention of four different kinds of grain here-wheat, bar. ley, millet, and vetches.

There are six different kinds of grain mentioned here, not only by the Septuagint and Vulgate, but probably also by the Iebrew.

Sept.-σπείξει,

μικρον μελάνθιον, κύμινον, πυρον, κρίθην,

κέγχρον, και ζεαν.

Vulg.-seret gith, cyminum, triticum, hordeum, milium,

et viciam.

קצח והפיץ-.IHeb כמן הטה וכסמת נסמן. שערה

vehepits ketsach cammon cbittah soarah nisman vecussameth Quere Is 101 nisman a mistake for 1250 sesumon, or sesamum, so well known in the East? EDIT.

properly casts in the principal wheat, and the barley, and the millet, and the rye, or whatever grain the fourth word means.

Wheat, barley, millet, and vetches, are supposed to be the grains that the Prophet mentions: now the time when they are sown, and the soil which is chosen for each respectively, differ; but God has given men the requisite sagacity.

"They begin to plough about the latter end of September, and sow their earliest wheat about the middle of October. The frosts are never severe enough to prevent their plowing all winter, so that they continue to sow all sorts of grain to the end of January, and barley sometimes after the middle of February. No harrow is used, but the ground is ploughed a second time after it is sown, in order to cover the grain; in some places, where the soil is a little sandy, they plough but once, and that is after sowing.'

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Here we see the wheat requires to be sown much earlier than the barley; GOD has given the ploughman the discretion that is requisite to distinguish between the proper times of sowing them.

When we came farther, says Rauwolff, describing his voyage down the Euphrates, "we had generally even ground at both sides, and not a few fields, the most part whereof were sown with Indian millet, for they sow more of this than of wheat or barley, for the Russell, vol. i. p. 73.

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sand is pretty deep, wherein the corn would not grow so well. This millet was just fit to be cut down, and in some places they had it in already.' . . . . . Hereof they bake very welltasted bread and cakes, and some of them are rolled very thin, and laid together like unto a letter, so that they are about four inches broad, six long, and two thick; they are of an ashen colour. The inhabitants call it still at this day by its ancient Arabian name dora, whereof Rhases makes mention."

Here we see a great difference between the culture of the millet of those countries, and that of the wheat and barley. It is sown in such a sandy soil, on the edge of the great Arabian desart, that neither the wheat, nor the barley, according to him, would grow there. These two last, Russell tells us, are repeated by the end of May N. S. just after the drought of a Syrian summer comes on; while the millet is left abroad exposed to those violent heats, and not gathered in till the middle of October, which is after the time the autumnal rain often begins to fall. What a loss was it to the beauty and energy of the Prophet's representation, of GoD's instructing the tiller of the ground how to proceed with the different kinds of grain, and what to sow in the different kinds of soil, when the word signifying millet was unfortunately taken to be a Ray's Trav. p. 151.

The middle of October.

* Rauwolff.

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