42

The Resources and Future of Austria.

our neighbours), with which England can carry on a commerce so extensive and beneficial on both sides. With augmented material prosperity, the political importance of Austria will revive. A great constitutional and conservative monarchy in the heart of Europe, connected by political and commercial interests with Great Britain, cannot but prove one of the best securities of peace. The part which Austria once played in the great drama of the world was am imposing one. As the head of the old Germanic Empire, her Sovereign was long supreme. That time-honoured dignity has passed away, new political combinations have been formed, and new principles prevail. The reconstruction of a great Teutonic empire embracing the whole of Germany is a dream of political pedants. The influence of Germany, which was once so great in Europe, will hereafter be felt rather in an identity of moral sympathies and material interests than in a powerful political organization. Germany may be various, yet united; and any serious danger to a part would speedily combine, for the purpose of resistance, all her people into one. The ordinary balance of power is best maintained by two great Statesa Northern and a Southern. Russia thus possesses in Prussia (if Prussia were wisely ruled) a strong bulwark against French aggression; while England, France, and Turkey obtain an effectual security against any dangerous outbreak of Russian ambition in the existence of a great Austrian empire in the south. In the new phase which Austria has now entered she may shine with a truer splendour than she ever possessed before, and will, perhaps, be recognised by future ages as the first great Continental State which reconciled the dignity of monarchy with the energy of freedom, and the power of a vast but composite empire with the liberty and contentment of each of its component parts.

ART. II.-1. Hierophyticon, sive Commentarius in loca Scripturæ Sacræ quæ Plantarum faciunt mentionem; Auctore Mat. Hillero. Traject. ad Rhenum, 1725. 4to.

2. Travels or Observations relating to several parts of Barbary and the Levant. Oxford, 1738; with Supplement, &c., 1746. By Thomas Shaw, D.D., F.R.S.

3. Olavi Celsii Hierobotanicon, sive de Plantis Sacræ Scripturæ dissertationes breves. 2 vols. 8vo. Amst., 1748.

4. Physica Sacra, Iconibus aeneis illustrata. J. J. Scheuchzer. Amst., 1752. 5 vols. folio.

5. Voyages and Travels in the Levant in the years 1747-1752,

containing

By

containing Observations in Natural History, &c., particularly in the Holy Land and the Natural History of the Scriptures. the late F. Hasselquist. 1766.

6. Vermischte Sammlungen aus der Naturkunde zur Erklärung der heiligen Schrift. Von Samuel Oedman. 1786.

7. Descriptiones Plantarum et Animalium, &c., quæ in Itinere Orientali observavit Petrus Forskål. Hauniæ, 1775.

8. Samuelis Bocharti Hierozoicon, sive de Animalibus S. Scrip turæ, recensuit suis notis adjectis E. F. C. Rosenmüller. 3 vols. 4to. Lips. 1793.

9. Calmet's, Aug., Great Dictionary of the Bible, with continuation and Scripture illustrated by means of Natural Science in Botany, Natural History, &c. By C. Taylor. 4to. 4 vols. London, 1797-1803.

10. Hemprich and Ehrenberg's Symbola Physicæ, seu Icones et Descriptiones Animalium, ex Itinere per Africam borealem et Asiam occidentalem, &c. Berol. 1828-1831.

11. A Dictionary of the Natural History of the Bible. By Thaddeus M. Harris. London, 1833.

12. The Mineralogy and Botany of the Bible. By E. F. C. Rosenmüller. Translated from the German. Edinb., 1841.

13. Palestine: the Physical Geography and Natural History of the Holy Land. By John Kitto. London, 1841.

14. A Scripture Herbal. By Maria Callcott. London, 1842. 15. The Plants of the Bible. By John H. Balfour, M.A., M.D. 1857.

16. Kitto's Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature. Edited by the Rev. W. Lindsay Alexander, D.D. Parts I.-XIII. Edinb. 17. A Dictionary of the Bible, comprising its Antiquities, Biography, Geography, and Natural History. Edited by William Smith, LL.D. Vol. I. London, 1860.

N

This preface to the posthumous work of his enterprising

one of my botanical lectures in 1747,' writes Linnæus, in

pupil Hasselquist, I enumerated the countries of which we knew the natural history and those of which we were ignorant. Among the latter was Palestine: with this we were less acquainted than with the remotest parts of India; and although the natural history of this remarkable country was most necessary for divines and writers on the Scriptures, who have used their greatest endeavours to know the animals therein mentioned, yet they could not with any degree of certainty determine which they were before some one had been in the country and informed himself of its natural history.' Notwithstanding the publication of a few contributions to our knowledge of the natural

history

history of Palestine, it must be confessed that the great Swede's lament, uttered more than one hundred years ago, is almost as applicable now as it was then; we are still less acquainted with the natural history of Palestine than with the remotest parts of India. This remark applies, it is true, more especially to its zoology and geology, although much yet remains to be done for the botany of the Holy Land. 'It is perfectly amazing,' a recent traveller in Palestine once remarked to the writer of this article, 'how little we know of the fauna and flora of this country, and how rich and new they are.' As a practical illustration of the truth of this observation, we may notice that our great national Museum contains scarcely any specimens of animals from Palestine; it matters not which department you visit. If you desire to see the fish which swim in the Sea of Galilee, and which in Apostolic times (as now) formed the principal support of the inhabitants of Capernaum and the other villages around the lake, you will be disappointed. There was not a year ago a single specimen of a fish from Palestine in the British Museum. If you visit the entomological department and ask to see specimens of insects, you will generally obtain no other information than that the Museum contains no specimens of any Palestine species. And so we may go on, and obtain the same negative results whatever be the department visited. How is this? How is it that naturalists, who have brought or sent to this country animals from almost every portion of the habitable globe, have done so little for Palestine? Is it because her fauna is poor and little diversified? Certainly not; on the contrary, perhaps there is no country in the world, as Mr. Tristram assures us, whose physical character presents on a small scale an epitome of the natural features of all regions, mountainous and desert, northern and tropical, maritime and inland, pastoral, arable, and volcanic. The bear (Ursus Syriacus) of the snowy heights of Lebanon and the gazelle of the desert, the wolf of the north and the leopard of the tropics, are associated together; the buntings, goldfinches, and linnets of our own land occur together with brilliant forms of tropical bird-life, such as the little sun-bird (Cinnyris osea) and the beautiful Amydrus Tristramii, whose notes of wonderful power and of the richest volume make the very rocks resound. Within a walk of Bethlehem the common frog of England, the chameleon, and the gecko of Africa may be found almost in company, while the Lepidoptera of Palestine are as numerous and as varied as might have been expected in a land of flowers.* Is it because there are few inducements for

* Dictionary of the Bible,' art. Palestine, Zoology of.

the

the naturalist that we possess so imperfect a knowledge of the fauna of Palestine? We are told (1 Kings iv. 33) that the wisest of men thought it not unworthy of him to speak of its 'trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.' Our ignorance is chiefly to be ascribed, no doubt, to the unsettled nature of the country, and the difficulty and danger of making investigations and collecting specimens amongst a lawless people; besides which most of the travellers who year by year visit the Holy Land are led thither by associations of a different nature from those which engross the mind of the naturalist; they are absorbed in questions of an historical or topographical character, and really have not time for collecting specimens of natural history during the short period commonly allowed for a tour in the East. Hence many questions, the solution of which would aid us in our attempts to determine the plants and animals mentioned in the Bible, are left undecided. The want of this information was noticed by the late Dr. Kitto, who thus writes :

The Natural Histories of the Bible form a class by themselves, having less connexion than any other with the science of nature. They are rather works of criticism than of Natural History-rather the production of philologists than of natural historians. Whatever learning could do on such subjects has been done; and whatever might be done by science, observation, and well directed research has been left undone. The process usually taken in works of this class has been to exhaust the resources of philology and conjecture in the attempt to discover the meaning of the Hebrew name and the object denoted by it. From the very nature of the thing, the conclusion arrived at is often unsatisfactory or uncertain. But a conclusion being taken, the ancient writers of Greece and Rome are ransacked to supply the history and description of the object, and in particular to furnish such intimations as may coincide with or illustrate those of the sacred writers. All this was very proper; but the value of the information thus collected as contributory to a Natural History of Palestine might have been very greatly enhanced had corroborations and elucidations been sought in the actual condition of the country, and the character of its products in the various departments of nature.'

The faulty process complained of by Dr. Kitto was certainly not pursued by the indefatigable Hasselquist, nor by the members of that famous expedition which, at the suggestion of the learned Michaelis, sailed from Copenhagen in 1761 for the purpose of illustrating the Sacred Records. Poor Has

selquist, after hearing the lament of Linnæus relative to the defective knowledge of the natural productions of the Holy Land, though in a very delicate state of health, determined to visit the country and investigate its natural history. He accordingly sailed from Stockholm to Smyrna in 1749, and after visiting Egypt and Palestine, and making many valuable notes on the zoology and botany of these countries, he was compelled, on account of the heat of Palestine, to return to Smyrna, where he died in the thirty-first year of his age, wasting away daily,' as his great tutor and biographer laments, like a lamp whose oil is spent.' The result of Hasselquist's investigations was given to the world by Linnæus in 1757, under the name of 'Iter Palæstinum;' the volume was translated into English in 1776. Imperfect as this work is, owing to the short time the traveller was in Palestine, it would be difficult to name another more valuable; and it is still the book of reference for those interested in the matters of which it treats.

The great Danish expedition of 1761 included Carsten Niebuhr, F. C. von Haven, the naturalist Forskål, C. C. Cramer as physician, and G. W. Baurenfeind as draughtsman. They visited Lower Egypt, Mount Sinai, and Arabia Felix, which last country appears to have been the destined seat of their mission. At Mocha Von Haven the philologist died; soon after Forskål expired; and while the three remaining travellers were on their journey from Mocha to Bombay, the painter Baurenfeind died; and at Bombay it was poor Niebuhr's melancholy duty to bury the last of his fellow travellers, for there the physician Cramer breathed his last. The result of the combined labours of these travellers was published in three separate works, which contain a vast amount of information relative to the countries visited. The natural history portion, containing an account of the plants and animals observed by Forskål, was published at the expense of Niebuhr; and although it contains no direct contributions to the natural history of Palestine, it is still of much value in aiding to determine those productions of Egypt and Arabia of which mention is made in the Bible.

From the great French work on Egypt,* also, the student of Biblical natural history may derive much assistance, as well as from the Natural History of Aleppo,' by Dr. Russell. But the writers who are most famous for the value of their researches are undoubtedly Samuel Bochart and Olaus Celsius, the former for his systematic treatises on the different animals mentioned in the Bible, the latter for his discussions on the plants.

* Description de l'Égypte,' &c.

Bochart