It is pleasant to reflect that, to some extent, this reproach has been removed. It always entered into the plans of the Palestine Exploration Society to study the natural history of the Holy Land; and although they have not been able to equip and maintain a party of naturalists, charged with this business alone, some of their officers have gathered interesting facts incidentally. Other inquirers, like Rev. Wm. Houghton and Mr Thaddeus Mason, have been usefully engaged on the same work. Mr H. Chichester Hart, who accompanied Professor E. Hull through the Arabah and Southern Palestine, has written an interesting volume on "The Animals mentioned in the Bible." But it is to Rev. Dr Tristram we are chiefly indebted. The Memoirs of the Survey include a magnificent volume on the "Fauna and Flora of Western Palestine," in which he works out his valuable series of investigations, and besides giving facts and details, treats the subject in a large philosophical way, as he does also in his lectures. "You have on Lebanon and Hermon," he says, "a climate like that of the Alps, or two-thirds of the way up Mont Blanc. You have on the tops of Lebanon and Hermon an almost arctic climate, and you have a fauna and a flora (animals and plants) corresponding to that climate. You know that when you descend a coal-pit 1300 feet deep you get into a very warm temperature indeed. Now the Dead Sea is 1300 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and the consequence is that you have around the Dead Sea a tropical or sub-tropical climate, and you have sub-tropical products.
"At the northern end of the Holy Land you find yourself at the starting point of the Jordan, which, being 1000 feet above the Mediterranean at the grotto of Banias, descends so rapidly that it is only a few feet above the sea level at Lake Huleh. Mount Hermon rises abruptly from its base near Lake Huleh (the ancient Waters of
