s. V.JUNE 2, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
431
- 'a tiny, dry, horn-shaped flower, about the size of
a. finger-nail ; it has small, withered branches, which spread out the moment the stem is placed in water, but no colour returns."
De Saulcy has been quoted at 1 st S. xi. 449. He says his discovery was named Saulcya hierichuntica, and that the flower had the appearance of a dried Eastern daisy. A later description of the plant is given in the
- Treasury of Botany,' by Lindley and Moore
(1874). Its recognized name is now Anastatica hierochuntina (sic) ; it is a small annual, with short stem, from which extend oblong leaves, the flowers small and white. When in flower the branches spread rigidly, but when the seed ripens the leaves wither and drop, the whole plant becomes dry, and each branch curls inwards, forming a ball as if of wicker work.' 3 *'
Thus described, it is simply impossible to apply to the lowly though curious plant the stately language of Jesus, the son of Sirach, who in his exaltation of Wisdom wrote (Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 14) :
I was exalted like a cedar in Libanus, f
And as a cypress tree upon the mountains of
Hermon.
I was exalted like a palm tree in Engaddi, And as a rose plant in Jericho. As a fair olive in a pleasant field, And grew up as a plane tree by the water.
Here the rose plant of Jericho is grouped with the cedar, the cypress, the palm, the olive, and the plane strange and unequal companionship for a plant said to be but six inches high. With MR. C. S. WARD, we would know the authority for the identifi- cation. Dean Stanley, not troubled with the botanical definition, thought that the oleander, with its beautiful rosy blossoms, and flourishing on the well-watered plain of Jericho, might represent the poetic rose C Sinai and Palestine,' 1866, p. 146). And, as we learn from the lady traveller, the real rose, as we know it, yet grows in the oasis where is the modern wretched village.
A willing tribute of appreciation will be given to the most interesting account of the sacred country afforded by the indefatigable, highly intelligent, though perhaps somewhat credulous pilgrim whose work has been quoted. W. L. RUTTON.
EPITAPH AT BOWES, YORKSHIRE (10 th S. v.
370). Bowes is out of the beaten track of
travellers between Scotland and England,
but when he was acting as tutor to the sons
- At Kew are seen several specimens. The
<lried-up balls vary in size, the largest being about four inches in diameter.
of the Duke of Montrose, and conducting
them, as Dr. Johnson puts it, " round the
common circle of modish travels," Mallet
may possibly have been there or thereabouts.
Murray's 'Yorkshire Handbook' (third ed.,
p. 344) says that Dr. Dinsdale, author of the
- Teesdale Glossary,' in his edition of Mallet's
'Ballads and Songs' (1857), has inserted all the information he could collect relating to the subject of the poem, and that he erected a monument to the memory of the lovers, on which is an extract from the register. The late W. Hylton Longstaffe tells us, in his ' Richmondshire,' that Dr. Dinsdale has quite exhausted the subject, and adds that in the church register an interlineation has been made in a different hand. The word "sup- posed " has been inserted as a substitute for the word "purely," making the clause "purely thro' love" read "supposed thro 1 love."
Anderson's 'British Poets ' (vol. ix. p. 717) has an extract from a letter, written, in answer to the inquiries of a Mr. Copper- thwaite, by the curate of Bowes, confirmatory of the main facts of the story as told by the poet.
Mallet's second wife, Lucy Elstob, belonged to an old North of England family, of which the best-known members were her cousins, William and Elizabeth Elstob, the Anglo- Saxon scholars. Her father was land steward to the Earl of Carlisle, and it is not a far-fetched theory to surmise that it was through this connexion that the poet obtained particulars of the tragic end of Edwin and Emma. Mrs. Mallet was a woman of considerable talent, and, if not herself a literary woman, mixed in the society of literary men, and, as readers of Bos well's 'Johnson' will remember, once much offended David Hume by her pertness in introducing herself to him with the remark, "We Deists should know each other." JOHN OXBERRY.
Gateshead.
This epitaph is said, on the authority of Grainge's ' Castles and Abbeys of York- shire,' p. 382, to have been copied from the parish register, and inscribed on the stone at the west end of Bowes Church at the expense of F. T. Dinsdale, Esq. In the same work will be found much interesting in- formation concerning Bowes and the curious inscription mentioned.
JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.
Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.
The reason why the epitaph at Bowes has not appeared in 4 N. & Q.' may probably be
