age and race and clime should turn with love and thankfulness.
It seems to belong to all lands in another way—by sharing what is special to each. Nowhere out of Palestine are to be found natural features so opposite, and the animal and vegetable life of such different parts of the globe.
In a country about the size of Switzerland are snow-capped mountains, parched deserts, beautiful lakes; plains scarlet with poppies, and desolate stony wastes; groves of feathery palms, and oaks, chestnuts, pines, and firs; vines, melons, pomegranates, the sugar cane; and apples, nuts, and fields of waving corn.
The lion, rhinoceros, wild bull, and bison, are no longer found, but there are camels and bears, wolves and hyenas, jackals and apes, with the horses, asses, sheep, and goats, hares and foxes of our own land.
Palestine has our birds, too, all the warblers of our woods and hedges, the blackbird, thrush, and cuckoo, with sparrows, rooks, and jackdaws. The robin spends his winter there; all about Bethlehem the goldfinch is common, wild ducks abound in the Jordan valley, whilst soaring above most rocky ravines are the vulture and the eagle. Might we not think that the various creatures familiar to us in different parts of the world are gathered together in the Holy Land to be blessed for every land?
To bring home to ourselves the Life of our Blessed Lord on this earth of ours, it helps us to know the kind of country and scenery that lay around Him, the animals and birds and flowers He would see; to be able to picture to ourselves the little white houses with their low roofs and blinking windows that would come within sight when He neared a village; the sort of people with
