that an instance occurred when an ass's head was sold for eighty pieces of silver, and a cab of doves' dung for five ; so that the passage may be understood literally, since it is not incredible that persons oppressed by severe famine should devour even the excrements of animals. In the account of the famine and pestilence in Egypt, A.D. 1200, 1201, written in Arabic by the physician Abd-allatif, we have a remarlcable illustra- tion of this passage. He says, *'The poor, already pressed by the yam«n6 which increased continually, were driven to devour dogs, and the carcasses of ani- mals and men, yea, even the excrements of both." Taking the term, however, in a literal sense, various other explanations have been given of the use to which the doves' dung was applied. Some of the Rab- bins were of opinion that it was used for fuel, and Jo- sephus (Ant. ix, 4) that it was purchased for its salt. Mr. Harmer {Ob^rv, iii, 185) has suggested that it might have been a valuable article, as being of great use for quickening the growth of esculent plants, par- ticidarly melons; and he shows, what is well known, that the Persians live much on melons in the summer months, and use pigeons' dung in raising them. All travellers descrilie the number of pigeon-houses in Persia. See above. Mr. Edwards, as cited by Dr. Harris, remarks that it is not likely they had much ^O^und to cultivate in so populous a city for gardens ; and is disposed therefore to understand it as meaning the offals or refuse of all sorts of grain, which was wont to be given to pigeons, etc. Dr. Harris, however, ob- serves that the stress of the famine might have been so great as to have compelled the poor among the be- sieged in Samaria to devour either the intestines of the doves, after the more wealthy had eaten the bodies, or, as it might perhaps be rendered, the crops^ with the undigested contents, as suggested by Fuller {MiscelL 8acr, vi, 2, p. 724). Bochart, indeed, has shown (Hi- eroz. ii, 573) that the term ** pigeons' dung" was ap- plied by the Arabs to different vegetable substances. He quotes Avicenna as applying the term stercus co- hmbarum to two different plants or substances. One of these is described by Avicenna and other Arab au- thors under the names kuz-kundem and joug-kundem^ as a light substance like moss. Secondly, this name was given to the ashnan or usnan^ which appears to be a fleshy-leaved plant, that, like the salsokuy salicomias, or mesembryanthemumsy when burnt, yields alkali in its ashes. Ihom. this Bochart has been led to consider it as identical with another plant, which occurs under the name of kaii both in the Hebrew and Arabic lan- guages, and which was used in ancient times, as at the present day, as an article of food. See Parched Corn. Celsius, however {Hierob. ii, 32), has shown that Bochart was mistaken in affirming that the arti- cle of food known among the Arabs by the epithet doves* or sparrows' dung was pulse or chick-peas, and therefore the connection between the Hebrew and Ar- abic terms kaH falls to the ground. Still it remains , certain that the Arabs call the maritime plant kali, fh>m the ashes of which soda (hence called cU-kalt) is obtained, by the epithet sparrows' dung. But this, if accessible at all in Sataaria, would hardly be a regu- lar article of food, even in a siege, much less be stored up for the purpose of sale, as the article in question appears to have been. We may also compare the Grer- man Teufelsdreck ^"devil's dung") as expressive of the odor of asaftttida (see Gesenius, Thesaur, p. 516). Linnieus suggested (Presleetionesy ed. P. D. Giseke, p. 287) that the Heb. term may signify the Omithogalum umbellatumy " Star of Bethlehem." On this subject the late Dr. Edward Smith remarks {English Botany^ iv, 130, ed. 1814) : " If Linnseus is rieht, we obtain a sort of clew to the derivation of omiihogalum (birds' milk), which has puzzled all the etymologists. May not this observation apply to the white fluid which al- ways accompanies the dung of birds, and is their urine ? One may almost perceive a similar combination of col-
DOVES' DUNG
880
DOW
on in the green and white of this flower, which accords I plants and yegetable prodactions wen
precisely in this respect with the description which Dioscorides gives of his omitho^calum." Sprengel (Comment, on Dioscorides, ii, 173) is inclined to adopt the explanation of Linnieas. The late Lady Callcott,
Star of Bethlehem iOrnithogalum UmbeUatum),
in her Scripture Herbal (1842, p. 180) infen that the piffeont* dung which has been mentioned above as be- ing eaten in England in the famine of 1316 was the roots of this plant It is a native of that country, and also of Tauros, Caucasus, and Northern Africa. Dios- corides states that its bulbs were sometimes cooked with bread, in the same way as the melcaUMum^ and abo that it was eaten both raw and roasted. The roots were also commonly eaten in Italy and other southern countries at an early period. If the besieged had communication with the exterior, or even if any of their body could have dug in the neighborhood of the walls, for the kind of "eiuth-nut" offered by tiie bulbs of the omilhoffcUum, or Star of Bethlehem, which is said to be abundant in the neighborhood of Samaria, there does not appear any good reason why it should not be the substance alluded to. But it does not seem so likely to have been stored up ; and no distinct ref- erence has been found in the Arab authors to such a plant under the name of siercut coUmbarum,