THIS tree is named, from its straight, upright growth, for which it seems more remarkable than any other tree. It sometimes rises to the height of a hundred feet, and is one of the most beautiful trees of the vegetable kingdom. The stalks are generally full of rugged kuots, which are the vestiges of the decayed leaves: for the trunk is not solid like other trees, but its centre is filled with pith, round which is a tough bark full of strong fibres when young, which, as the tree grows old, hardens and becomes ligenous. To this bark the leaves are closely joined, which in the centre rise erect, but after they are advanced above the vagina that surrounds them, they expand very wide on every side of the stem, and as the older leaves decay, the stalk advances in height. The leaves, when the tree has grown to a size for bearing fruit, are six or eight feet long; are very broad when spread out, and are used for covering the tops of houses, and similar purposes.

The fruit which is called 'date,' grows below the leaves in clusters; and is of a sweet and agreeable taste. A considerable part of the inhabitants of Egypt, of Arabia, and of Persia, subsist almost entirely on its fruit. They boast also of its medicinal virtues. Their camels feed upon the date stone. From the leaves they make couches, baskets, bags, mats, and brushes; from the branches, cages for their poultry, and fences for their gardens; from the fibres of the boughs, thread, ropes, and rigging; from the sap is prepared a spirituous liquor; and the body of the tree furnishes fuel: it is even said, that from one variety of the palm tree, meal has been extracted, which is found among the fibres of the trunk, and has been used for food.

Several parts of the Holy Land, no less than of Idumæa, that lay contiguous to it, are described by the ancients to have abounded with date trees. Judea, particularly, is typified in several coins of Vespasian, by a disconsolate woman sitting under a palm tree. It may be presumed, therefore, that the palm tree was formerly much cultivated in the Holy Land.

In Deut. xxxiv. 3, Jericho is called 'the city of palm trees;' because, as Josephus, Strabo, and Pliny have remarked, it anciently abounded with them: and Dr. Shaw states that there are several of them yet at Jericho, where there is the convenience they require of being often watered; where likewise the climate is warm, and the soil sandy, or such as they thrive and delight in. At Jerusalem, Sichem, and other places to the northward, however, Dr. Shaw states that he rarely saw above two or three of them together; and even these, as their fruit rarely or ever comes to maturity, are of no further service, than (like the palm tree of Deborah) to shade the retreats or sanctuaries of their Sheikhs, as they might formerly have been sufficient to supply the solemn processions with branches. See John xii. 13. From the present condition and quality of the palm trees in this part of the Holy Land, Dr. Shaw concludes that they never were either numerous or fruitful here, and that therefore the opinion of Reland and others, that Phoenice is the same with a country of date trees' does not appear probable; for if such a useful and beneficial plant had ever been cultivated there to advantage, it would have still continued to be cultivated, as in Egypt and Barbary.

It is a singular fact, that these trees are male and female, and that the fruit which is produced by the latter, will be dry and insipid without a previous communication with the former.

The palm-tree arrives at its greatest vigor about thirty years after transplantation, and continues so seventy years afterwards, bearing yearly fifteen or twenty clusters of dates, each of them weighing fifteen or twenty pounds. After this period, it begins gradually to decline, and usually falls about the latter end of its second century. 'To be exalted,' or 'to flourish like the palm tree,' are as just and proper expressions, suitable to the nature of this plant, as 'to spread abroad like a cedar,' Psal. xcii. 12.

The root of the palm tree produces a great number of suckers, which, spreading upward, form a kind of forest. It was under a little wood of this kind, as Calmet thinks, that the prophetess Deborah dwelt between Ramah and Bethel, Judg. iv. 5. And probably to this multiplication of the palm tree, as he suggests, the prophet alludes, when he says, "The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree,' (Psal. xcii. 12. comp. Psal. i. 3,) rather than to its towering height, as Dr. Shaw supposes.

The palm is much fonder of water than many other trees of the forest, and this will account for its flourishing so much better in some places than in others. When Moses and his people, on their way, to the promised land arrived at Elim, they found twelve wells of water by the side of seventy palm trees, Exod. xv. 27.

The prophet Jeremiah, describing, in a fine strain of irony, the idols of the heathen, says, 'they are upright as the palm tree,' (chap. ix. 5,) which Calmet takes to be an allusion to their shape, remarking, from Diodorus Siculus, that the ancients, before the art of carving was carried to perfection, made their images all of a thickness, straight, having their hands hanging down, and close to their sides, the legs joined together, the eyes shut, with a very perpendicular attitude, and not unlike the body of a palm tree. Such are the figures of those ancient Egyptian statues that still remain.

The straight and lofty growth of the palm tree, its longevity and great fecundity, the permanency and perpetual flourishing of its leaves, and their form, resembling the solar rays, make it, says Mr. Parkhurst, a very proper emblem of the natural, and thence of the Divine, light. Hence in the holy place or sanctuary of the temple (the emblem of Christ's body) palm trees were engraved on the walls and doors between the coupled cherubs, 1 Kings vi. 29, 32, 35. Ezek. xli. 18, 19, 20, 25, 26. Hence, at the feast of Tabernacles branches of palm trees were to be used, among others, in making their booths. Comp. Lev. xxiii. 30. Neh. viii. 15. Palm branches were also used as emblems of victory, both by believers and idolaters. Believers, by bearing palm branches after a victory, or in triumph, meant to acknowledge the supreme Author of their success and prosperity, and to carry on their thoughts to the Divine Light, the great Conqueror over sin and death. Comp. 1 Mac. xiii. 51. 2 Mac. x. 7. John xii. 13. Rev. vii. 9.

In Cant. vii. 7, the stature of the bride is compared to a palm tree, which conveys a pleasing idea of her gracefulness and beauty. It is probable that Tamar, (Ezek. xlvii. 19, &c.) or Tadmor, (1 Kings ix. 18) built in the desert by Solomon, and afterwards called Palmyra by the Greeks, obtained its name from the number of palm trees which grew about it. Mr. Parkhurst has a long and interesting article on the subject, to which the reader is referred,

THE Apostle Paul distinguishes olive trees as of two kinds (Rom xi. 24;) the wild or natural, and those under care and culture. The cultivated olive tree is of a moderate height, its trunk knotty, its bark smooth and ash-colored, and its wood solid and of a yellowish color. The leaves are oblong, almost like those of the willow, of a green color, dark on the upper side, and white beneath. In the month of June it puts out white flowers that grow in bunches. Each flower is of one piece, widening upwards, and dividing into four parts. The fruit is oblong and plump; first green, then pale, and when quite ripe, black. The wild olive is smaller in all its

parts.

It does not appear that Egypt was ever remarkable for the cultivation of this tree. They abounded, however, in Syria, and are of better quality there than in any part of the Levant.

The scripture references to the olive tree are frequent. The royal Psalmist and some of the sacred writers speak with rapture of the green olive tree.

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So, in the fifty-second Psalm, David describes a wicked man, as soon to wither away and disappear; while he himself should be like a young vigorous olive tree, which had long to live and to flourish. The beauty of the olive tree, is alluded to in other passages of scripture, and consisted in the spread of its branches, and not in its color: His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree,' Hos. xiv. 6. When the Psalmist says, 'I shall be anointed with green (Eng. tr. fresh) oil' (Ps. xcii. 10), where there is the same word in the original, we cannot suppose that he means oil of a green color. The word rather means precious, fragrant oil, such as that used by princes in times of prosperity: fragrant as a field, which the Lord has blessed, a flowery field, in all its verdure, to the smell of which Isaac compared the smell of the perfumed clothes Jacob had on when his father blessed him, Gen. xxvii. 27. It is natural to suppose that most, if not all, the oil that was used for the purpose of

anointing, was rendered more or less fragrant by the infusion of odoriferous plants or substances: otherwise it would have hardly answered the purpose of its adoption in those hot climates. On this account it became highly necessary to the enjoyment of life: and hence the prophet threatened Israel, that they should tread olives but not anoint themselves with oil, Mic. vi. 15.

The olive tree, from the effect of its oil, in supplying, relaxing, and preventing or mitigating pain, seems to have been adopted from the earliest period, as an enblem of the benignity of the Divine Nature; and particularly after the fall, to have represented the goodness and placability of God through Christ; and of the blessed influences of the Holy Spirit, in mollifying and healing our disordered nature, and in destroying or expelling from it the poison of the old (spiritual) serpent, even as oil-olive does that of the natural serpent or viper. Hence we see a peculiar propriety in the oliveleaf or branch being chosen by Divine Providence as a sign to Noah, of the abatement of the deluge, (Gen. viii. 11); and may also account for olive branches being ordered as one of the materials of the booths at the feast of Tabernacles (Neh. viii. 15), whence they became the emblems of peace to various and distant nations. Captain Cook found that green branches carried in the hand, or stuck in the ground, were thus universally understood by all the islanders, even in the South Seas.

In the sacred writings, olives are sometimes represented as beaten off the trees (Deut. xxiv. 20,) and at other times as shaken off (Isa. xvii. 6; ch. xxiv. 13); this, however, does not indicate an improvement made in aftertimes on the original mode of gathering them, nor different methods of procedure by different people, in the same age and country, who possessed olive yards; but rather expresses the difference between the gathering the main crops by the owners, and the way in which the poor collected the few olive berries that were left, and which, by the law, they were permitted to take.

The usual method of extracting the oil from olives, appears to have been by treading them with the feet, Deut. xxxiii. 24, comp. with Mic. vi. 15. Whether any previous preparation were necessary is uncertain: at present, mills are used for this purpose.

By what an apt and awful similitude does Paul represent God's rejection of the Jews and admission of the Heathen, by the boughs of an olive being lopped off, and the scion of a young olive ingrafted into the old tree (Rom. xi. 17, &c.); and continuing the same imagery, how strictly does he caution the Gentiles against insolently exulting over the mutilated branches, and cherishing the vain conceit that the boughs were lopped off merely that they might be ingrafted; for, if God spared not the native branches, they had greater reason to fear lest he would not spare them: that they should remember that the Jews through their wilful disbelief of Christianity were cut off, and that they, the Gentiles, if they disgraced their religion, would in like manner forfeit the Divine favor,