Arm after arm shall leave thy mouldering bust, SELSEA OAK. These are rather commonplace lines, but express the feelings with which ordinary spectators view these venerable trees. Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet, in more unusual strain thus addresses a blighted oak overmantled with ivy: "Hast thou seen, in winter's stormiest sky, The trunk of a blighted oak, Not dead, but sinking in slow decay Beneath Time's resistless stroke, Round which a luxurious ivy had grown, And wreathed it in verdure no longer its own? "Oh! smile not, nor think it a worthless thing, If it be with instruction fraught; That which will closest and longest cling Is alone worth a serious thought. Should aught be unlovely which thus can shed Glory o'er the dying, and leaves o'er the dead?" So much for oaks still flourishing, or of which the living remains are to be seen. But the most wonderful oak ever known to have grown on English soil was probably that dug out of Hatfield Bog, a description of which was given in an early volume of the "Philosophical Transactions," and is quoted by Evelyn in his "Sylva." This tree was a hundred and twenty feet in length, twelve in diameter at the base, ten in the middle, and six at the smaller end when broken off; so that the butt for sixty feet squared seven feet of timber, and four its entire length. In the "Sunday at Home" for September, 1873, a picture is given of a celebrated tree called traditionally Wycliffe's Oak, and sometimes Whitfield's Oak, and locally Crouch Oak, probably from the low crouching form of its chief branches. It is at the side of the road near Addlestone, in Surrey, and formerly marked the boundary of Windsor Forest in CHAPEL OAK, ALONVILLE, NORMANDY. this direction. Queen Elizabeth is said to have dined under its shade. The article in the "Sunday at Home" contains interesting notices of "Reformation Oaks" and of "Gospel Oaks," so named from the gospel of the day being read under them during processions on "gang days," and in perambulations in marking parish boundaries. All the oaks we have referred to are British. But other countries have memorable or notable trees, one of which may be mentioned as it is indirectly associated with English history. At Alonville, in Normandy, there is an oak which is more than thirty-five feet round the trunk. Extreme age bas destroyed all its interior. It is supported only by the outlayers and bark, though bursting into foliage in the summer. Within the hollow trunk a chapel has been formed, entered by a flight of steps. It is not impossible that under its shadow some of the Norman invaders may have met before the Conquest; as also Crusaders may have sung under its branches their exploits in the Holy Land. THE LAND OF THE GIANT CITIES. BY THE REV. W. WRIGHT, B.A., DAMASCUS. ROUND TOWER, SOUTH OF KHUBAB. KHUBAB is a large Christian village, built on the two marginal waves of the Lejah. An old inscription in the neighbouring village Zobeireh, in which there is a reference to Britain, gives the ancient name of this village, which was Habiba. Khubab, or Habiba, an entirely Christian village, under a Christian sheikh, contrasts most favourably with the places we have last visited. The Druzes at Burak are a parcel of outlaws watching for the police, or their other natural enemies, the Arabs. The people of Musmeih are wild animals with a little clothes. They have a limited. field for vicious practices-nobody worth a killing, and nothing to steal; but I have reason to believe that they have fair natural talents which would improve with opportunity and practice, for my companion dropped his rug from the saddle, and it disappeared among the rocks like a flash. Khubab is an agricultural village, wheeled round so far west from the Arabs as to be comparatively safe from their attacks; but sometimes the Arabs sweep over their fields, and sweep them clean enough, and sometimes also they gut and ruin the village. There are a few houses in the village of the best Hauranic style, with the ceiling slabs ornamented, and these are solid enough to defy the Arabs. The villagers also hide their wheat in pits (nawawis) in the earth, which they stop and cover over with dung, rubbish, stones, etc., so that the Arabs do not always find their grain treasures, but they sometimes torture the sheikh to make him disclose these granaries, and they have refinements in cruelty worthy of Roman Catholic priests. The men of Khubab labour in the fields during the seasons for labour, and during the remainder of the year they cut and dress basaltic millstones, which are rolled to Akka, and there shipped for the Egyptian market. The women spin and weave, and attend to household matters, and keep themselves comparatively clean. One of their occupations exclusively is kneading the cows' dung, and sticking it on the wall to dry for fuel. When dry these balls are gathered and stacked for winter use, as is done with peat in Ireland. There is not a shop in the town. Pedlars visit it with Manchester prints of brightest colours, Egyptian sugar, bracelets, etc., and get wheat, eggs, cheese, etc., in return for their merchandise. I proclaim that we have books for sale, and the whole village turns out and swarms to our tent. These people have a sufficiency of curiosity, and curiosity sometimes leads to knowledge. We have a fair prospect of selling all our books at the first market; but the schoolmaster comes with a stick and drives away his pupils, and after him the priest. arrives with great bluster and noise, and forces his flock back into the village. He declares that they have done sixty years without our Bible, and they will not permit it to enter among them. We are startled by hearing an almost Scripture expression drop from his passionate lips-"These people have PALMYRENE MORTUARY TOWER. turned the world upside down in Beyrout and Damascus, and they are come here also." It is in vain I tell him he is rejecting God's book, and Christ's gospel, and that already he has one of our Bibles on the altar of his church, for he is wrathful and inexorable, and he drives his flock away, but one of his lambs carries a Bible off without paying for it. The sheikh and another man come to our tent by night, Nicodemus-like, and eagerly buy two Bibles; and a pretty little bride, Feride-a rara avis-who had learnt German, and become a Protestant with the Prussian sisters at Beyrout, buys from us a Bogatzsky's "Golden Treasury," but her husband, still under the yoke of the priest, compels her to return it on the morrow. We spend Sunday here, and have a little conversation with most of the people, for they keep coming and going in a perpetual stream. Their questions and modes of thought are very interesting. During the day we stroll up to the top of the chief ridge, on which the village was built. We stop beside a little graveyard in which women are swinging backwards and forwards and wailing for their dead. Each grave is walled up with a single-stone wall about four feet high, which tapers in towards the top. The district is cut up into little gardens and fields, and walled around with high walls which have no entrance. But in these enclosures there is neither soil nor shrub-nothing but the bare grey stones. If they were ever gardens or vineyards, both soil and roots have entirely disappeared. The country about the village is not so rocky and rugged as at Musmeih. The greatest waves of the lava stopped a mile east, leaving a ridge-like formation, on which stand two cor spicuous towns that were finally destroyed by the Bedawin about six years ago. Looking towards the Druze mountain, the great basaltic lake or plateau does not look so fearfully desolate as when seen from the north; patches of green, with yellow flowers, relieve the dreary scene. Between us and Mount Hermon there stretches a vast level sea of green growing corn, dappled with red fields left fallow; and here and there black villages, with white domes and tall minarets, rise like islands, and conical hills and low ranges of mountains prevent the green flat sea from running up sheer to the edge of the mountain. Hermon itself, streaked and zebraed with snow, presents from this point one of its finest side views. However modern vulgarity may affect to despise Hermon for not being the biggest mountain in the world, it is by far the finest object in the whole Syrian landscape; and we do not wonder, when we view it from all quarters of the land, that it impressed so deeply the minds of patriarchs and prophets. About us, where we stand, the only signs of vegetation are a few patches of nettles and mallows, which grow among the blasted-looking desolate graves; but there are patches of green down below in the hollows, and as we look down on the village it presents a cheerful appearance-girls troop about in their bright Sunday dresses, and heads of families lie about in little grassy fields, with their children around them. The scene comes as near a picture of home life in a country village as anything I have seen in this country. From the point where we stand we can count fourteen round towers in the Lejah, and a great number of mortuary tombs resembling in a small way the Palmyrene towers. Being once detained a day at Khubab in consequence of my horse having lost a shoe we visited the round tower due south of the village, and succeeded in getting several good photographs of it. The tower stands near a fort at a well; it is built of basalt, and tapers from the base. The circumference one yard from the base is 68 feet; it has 37 layers of stone in it, the one with the other of which would be about a foot high each. The walls are 4 feet thick; the height of the door is 5 feet 5 inches, and its width 3 feet 3 inches. A central column of cylindrical stones supports a stone loft at the height of 14 feet, and a spiral staircase, the stones of which project from the wall, and are much worn by wear, ascend to the loft. We shall reserve our remarks on the object and use of these mysterious towers till we approach Orman, where we first, as we believe, found out their secret. Meantime we give an engraving from a photograph of the tower we examined, which, though not one of the largest, we take as a fair specimen. By its side, for comparison, we place one of the Palmyrene mortuary towers, which I found to be 111 feet high, and to contain loculi for 480 bodies. We also took a view of one of these towers as seen from a distance standing solitary on the plain of the Hauran. On our return from the tower we visited one of the ruins that are so numerous, and that no one thinks worthy of a visit. We chose Melihat Hezkîn, inasmuch as no European, as far as we knew, had ever visited it. We reached it on foot in less than an hour, and on our way we got both partridge and quail. We met three women who were out gathering a kind of wild rape, which they cook and We found the village just like all the other Hauran towns in a small way. The doors and ceilings and windows were stone. Each house, however, seemed to have more than the ordinary number of compartments. At one corner of the village, near the village tank or cistern, was a square tower 40 or 50 feet high, with a spiral staircase ascending to two stories. The upper floors were broken down, but enough remained to show the character of the building. The stones in the narrow streets were worn smooth, and the fireplaces showed signs of much use, but the place had been a long time utterly abandoned. At the northern corner, a little modern square building, domed over, contained the grave of Sheikh Hezkin, covered with a green cloth. Pilgrimages are made to the tomb, and each pilgrim leaves a staff stuck into the wall near the grave, so that the chamber is a magazine of staves. The only sign of life in the place was a solitary dove that flew out of the only tree in the village, which is that in the court of the mosque. On the 7th of April, 1873, we start for Ezrá, a town on the margin of the Lejah due south. The morning is raw and cold, and yet women and boys hang about our tent. As we work our way once more to the coast-line, we only see pensive donkeys meditating among the black rocks-pictures of longsuffering misery. When we push out from the black shore the ground becomes covered with flowers; among others I see pink convolvuluses, lilac mallows, yellow-hearted daisies, and scarlet pheasant's-eyes. We first pass through fenced and cultivated fields, much resembling parts in Ireland and Scotland, and soon we emerge on the broad unfenced plain, where the neighbours' landmarks, large black stones, show the boundaries of the different cultivators. Tibny is in front, on an eminence like most of the towns of this region. I gallop to the village, according to my custom, in advance of the cavalcade, shouting or singing something to bring the people out of their dens. I find that the most effective cry on such occasions is "fresh haddock," with a County Louth accent, and as we are in character of pedlars, the cry is not very unbecoming. In Druze villages we try a stave of the Druze war song, and it not only brings the people around us, but puts them in good humour, as they are no doubt charmed with our style of singing it. The whole village comes out to meet us, and salutations over, I point to the colporteur, who is opening his boxes, and tell them that he has books for sale, God's books, and explanations of them by good and learned men. I then take an armful of books, and leaving the crowd around the boxes with the colporteur, I literally take a walk of the town, jumping from roof to roof, and saluting the people down in their courts, till I have a sufficient crowd around me, and then sitting down on an aged stone, I read them passages that seem to turn up by accident. I thus have an opportunity of seeing the whole town, and of offering our books to every soul in it. Sometimes the crowd becomes menacing, and then I become aggressive, and question them in such a manner as to turn their attention from me to themselves. When it becomes only a case of throwing "pearls before swine," I commence and purchase their old coins and medals like other travellers. Frankness, and good-temper, and firmness, carry one safely along, while a little swaggering, or assumption of mystery, would get us turned out of the village, and something more. I always return to the colporteur with an enormous following of savages-climbing over walls and houses, and swarming out of lanes and dens, and all converging towards the books. Here a widow with impressive eagerness buys a Bible for her son, who can read, and she not only pays for it, but pours blessings upon us for bringing it to her. My son will read it to me, and I shall learn everything for myself," she exclaimed. Tibny, like most of the other towns, consists of two parts. The Roman official part, temple and all, is in ruins. The native inhabited part is on a mound of ruins, and is of more recent construction. 66 the house under her apron. When he has the Bible secured he discovers mistakes in the psalm-book, and gets back his money. Shukra has also its Corinthian capitals lying about, and several Greek inscriptions built into the walls with the wrong side down. It has all the Hauranic characteristics of the other towns, and from its modern walls peep the eloquent fragments of a higher civilisation and more prosperous times. Bearing to the left we enter Ezrá over a horrible path, partly Roman road, and partly the black basaltic rock worn smooth and slippery as polished steel. Ezrá is a large ruin, situated at the base of a rocky promontory, on the south-western corner of the Lejah. This ruin has recently been identified as the Edrei of Og, king of Bashan, but without sufficient reason, and contrary to overwhelming evidence. Edrei of Og was well known to the Greeks and Romans under the name Adraa, and this rendering of the Hebrew name in Greek corresponds to the rendering of other Shemitic names by the same people, especially in the bilingual inscriptions of Palmyra.* In Roman times, Adraa (Edrei) was one of the chief towns of the Arabian province, and, like Bosra, had liberty to coin its own money; and I have in my cabinet several imperial Greek coins struck at Adraa.† Now we are left in no hesitation as to the position of Adraa (Edrei), for Eusebius places it on the road to Capitolias and Gadara, twentyfive miles from Bosra, and the Peutinger tables place it twenty-four miles from Bosra in the same direction. Following the road that runs straight as an arrow from Bosra for twenty-four or twenty-five miles, we come upon an extensive ruin at the spot indicated by these two independent authorities. It is usually called Dera, but in classic Arabic it is Edhra, and the Bedawîn, who retain the oldest pronunciation of places, call it Edra. There need not be the least doubt that this Edra is the Adraa of the Greeks, and Edrei of Og, king of Bashan; and in the interest of Biblical geography it is well to have its claims reasserted, and the claims of Ezrá exposed and set aside for ever. Let us look at the three reasons given for the identification of Ezrá as the Edrei of Ög in opposition to Edra. First: The situation. occupies "an impregnable site," whereas " Edra lies in the open country." To this we reply that the city Bosra was in the open country too, and in the open country became much more great and famous than Edrei. Besides, King Og was strong enough to live in a city in the plain. And when the Israelites "went up by the way to Bashan" (Deut. iii. 1), Og did not retreat to some impregnable stronghold, but went out to meet them confident of victory. Second: The antiquity of the massive walls of the dwellings; and the chief advocate of this theory acknowledges that the buildings may be "as old at least as the Roman dominion.' The reply to this is obvious. Roman ruins, however massive, cannot be taken in evidence in the identification of the city of Og, king of Bashan. Third: The correspondence of the Arabic name Edhra to the Hebrew name Edrei. This is no reason, as it is founded in error. The Arabic name is not Edhra but Ezrá, as I have taken pains, in conjunction with Arabic scholars, to verify. Leaving Tibny, we pass a number of men ploughing up the fallow ground. They refuse to buy our books on the plea that they have no money; but they have no desire to possess them. Five other villages similar to Tibny lie along our path. At Muhejjeh there are long Greek inscriptions and pieces of Greek sculpture, but the inhabitants are the most surly Moslems we have met. On the principle of offering our books to all, we urge them to buy, taking no notice of their churlishness. The wonen of Muhejjeh have their legs tattooed in pretty patterns, so that they seem to have on blue open-work stockings, through which the white skin appears. They wear their petticoats short, and tucked up, in order to show their ornamented legs. Shukra, in the midst of a red plain, turns out to be a Christian village; and we can see that Christianity, even in a very degraded form, has a thew and sinew that renders it superior to Islamism. The people seem alive, and eager to see and know. I find such people, as a rule, better than their priest. Here they buy books, but the priest steals one. I watch the priest with much interest stealing the book, but do not interfere with him, as I know that he can put an end to our selling if he chooses. In the accomplishment of his little purpose he buys a psalm-book, and shuffles it and a Bible together until he thinks no one sees him, when he slips the Bible to his wife, who carries it off to lingering tradition of Og. It It was not up here, then, among the rocky fast • De Vogué, "Inscr. Palmyr.," p. 4. On the reverse of one is the uncouth figure of an enormous giant, a nesses of Bashan, that the giant leader and his host | Savilian Professor of Astronomy, we have asked were overcome by the hosts of the Lord, but down permission to give. yonder on the plain, as the Israelites "went up by In the "Athenæum" of May 2 there was given a the way to Bashan." We must not, however, over-charming fragment of autobiography, which Phillips look the testimony of the ancient tourist in these had, in 1866, drawn up. Portions of it we have seen, parts, for his vanity often led him to write the name but the writer of the obituary notice says that the of his city in conjunction with his own name. "Thus complete notes had not been published before. I, Smith of Birmingham," etc., or "We, the Smiths of Birmingham, erect this monument at our own expense, etc. On this question Smith's evidence is conclusive. Now Smith declares, with cutting emphasis and constant repetition, that the name of the place in Greek and Roman times was not Edhra or Adraa, but ZORAVA. The name of the city Zorava stands as conspicuous as a signboard on two large stones near the minaret, and engraved on the walls of the two churches-St. Elias and St. George. Og, king of Bashan, was one of our earliest and tallest friends. He and his wondrous bedstead had a large place in our imaginations ere we heard of "Jack the Giant-killer" and "Giant Despair." We owed his giantship a small debt of gratitude, and we have now paid it by restoring our tall and ancient friend to his own city and rightful inheritance.* SADO PROFESSOR JOHN PHILLIPS. AD it is that we shall see John Phillips no more. For five-and-forty years we have been accustomed to see his genial face and hear his cheery voice at the meetings of the British Association. Few, alas! now survive of the early members of the parliament of science. Brewster. Sedgwick, Murchison, Phillips, all but lately gone, formed a group of veterans such as we are not likely to see again. But the continuity of scientific distinction is not broken, and we only hope that new generations will inherit the spirit as well as add to the knowledge of their predecessors, the fathers and founders of the British Association. As long ago as 1865 we gave in the "Leisure Hour a memoir of Professor Phillips, with a full account of his life and labours. The closing sentences of that memoir thus referred to his published works and to his personal character: "These works are the result of a lifetime of continuous and unwearied labour in the prosecution of his chosen studies, and entitle the author, although he may be surpassed by others in particular attainments, to be regarded as the most accomplished geologist of his time." And as to the character of the man:-"We have never met with any man of more amiable disposition and greater simplicity of character, or of whom it would be so difficult to say anything nisi bonum. Honours have been heaped upon him, but they must have come unsolicited and unbought; he never took part in any factious controversy, and we are quite sure he would never have competed for any prize." The sad accident which deprived us of Phillips on the 24th of April this year was heard of with universal sorrow. His death was sudden, but he had attained the age of seventy-three, and no man in Oxford was more prepared than he was. From more than one of his most intimate friends we have had gratifying communications, one of which, from the "I was born on the happy Christmas Day, 1800, at Marden, in Wiltshire, the moment being noted by my father with the exactitude suited to a horoscope. He was the youngest son of a Welsh family, settled for very many generations on their own property at Blaen-y-ddol, in Carmarthenshire, and some other farms near it. In their possessions, much reduced from their ancient extent, my grandfather died in the beginning of this century. My father, born in 1769, was trained for the Church, in which some of his relations had place; but this plan was not carried out. He came to England, was appointed an Officer of Excise, and married the sister of dear old William Smith, of Churchill, in Oxfordshire. "My first teachings were under his eye, and I may say hand, for he now and then employed the argumentum baculinum-though very gently. But he died when I was seven years old; my mother soon after; and my subsequent life was under the friendly charge of my great relative, a civil engineer in full practice, known as 'Strata Smith.' "When I was nine years of age, my uncle Smith took me by the hand, while walking over some cornbrash fields near Bath, and showed me the pentacrinite joints. He afterwards immersed them in vinegar to show the extrication of carbonic acid, and the flotation or 'swimming' of the fossils. "Before my tenth year I had passed through four schools, after which I entered the long-forgotten, but much to be commended, old school at Holt Spa, in Wiltshire. Lately I rode through the village, and was sorry to find the place deprived of all that could be interesting to me. At Holt School a small microscope was given to me, and from that day I never ceased to scrutinize with magnifiers, plants, insects, and shells. In after-life this set me on making lenses, microscopes, telescopes, thermometers, barometers, electrophori, anemometers, and every kind of instrument wanted in my researches. "When you see me now, χαλεπῶς βαδίζων, tired with the ascent of Gea Fell, and the rough path to the Zmütt Glacier, you will hardly credit me as the winner of many a race, and the first in many a desperate leap. My work at this school was incessant for five years. I took the greatest delight in Latin, French, and Mathematics, and had the usual lessons in drawing. We were required to write a good deal of Latin, especially our Sunday Theme-of such I wrote many for my idle associates. I worked through Moles's Algebra and Simpson's Euclid, the two first books completely, and selections of the others. The French master was a charming old Abbé, a réfugić, whose patience and good-nature and perseverance were quite above praise. We spoke and wrote French in abundance. Of Greek, I learned merely the rudiments, to be expanded in after-life. I did not work at German till some years later: Italian I merely looked at. "From the tragedies and comedies of school, I passed to a most pleasant interlude, by accepting a twelvemonths' invitation to the home of my everton. The invaluable work of the latter is conclusive on this subject, In this question I agree with Burckhardt, Wetzstein, and Wadding-honoured friend, the Rev. Benjamin Richardson, of but it is beyond the reach of the public. Farleigh Castle, near Bath, one of the best naturalists |