four months" (Niebuhr, Arabia, p. 148). So A'olncy " Whoever has travelled to Cairo or Rosetta knows that the species of gourd called kerra will, in twenty- four hours, send out shoots near four inches long"' {Travels, i, 71). In Jerome's own description of the plant, however (Comment, ad loc), called in Syr. karo, Hnd Punic el-kiroa, Celsius recognises the castor-oil plant (f/ierobot. ii, 273 sq. ; Bochart, Ilierrz. ii, 293,
and appearance of a tree. From the erect habit, and the breadth of its foliage, this plant throws an ample shade, especially when young. From the softness and little substance of its stem, it may easily be destroyed by insects, whicli Rumphius describes as sometimes being the case. It would then necessarily Ary up rap- idly. As it is well suited to the country, and to the purpose indicated in the text, and as its name kiki is
62:;). The Ricinus was seen by Rauwolf {Trav. p. 52) ' so similar to Ukayon, it is generally thought by inter- in great al)tmdance near Tripol'i, where the Arabs call- , preters to be the plant wliich the sacred penman had ed it el-k-rua, while ))oth Ha^-sehpiist and Robinson , in view.— Kitto, s. v. ; Smith, s. v. observed very large specimens of it in the neighbor- i This cjiinion, however, that the first-named plant
GOURD
953
GOURD
above is ths true representative of Jonah's gourd, is reviewed by the Rev. H. Lobdell, ]M.D., niissionarj' in Assyria, in a letter published in the Bib!w!heca Sacra, April C, 1855, p. 395 sq., who says, "The Mohammedans, Christians, and Jews all agree in referring the plant to the kera, a kind of pumpkin peculiar to the East. The leaves are large, and the rapidit}' of growth aston- ishing. Its fruit is for tiic most part eaten in a fresh state, and is somewhat like the squash. It has no more than a generic resemljlance to the gourd of the United States, thougli I suppose that both are a species of the cucurbita. It is grown in great abundance on the alluvial l)anks of tlie Tigris, and on the jilain be- tween the river and the ruins of Nineveli, wliich is about a mile wide. . . . The castor-oil plant is culti- vated, indeed, to some extent here, but is never train- ed, like the kera, to run over structures of mud and brush to form booths in which the gardeners may pro- tect themselves from the terrible heats of the Asiatic sun. I have seen at a single glance dozens of these booths — these lodges in the fields of melons and cu- cumbers around the old walls of Nineveh (Isa. i, 8) — covered with the vines of the kera, of which there are numerous species, the fruit of which weighs from one to fifty pounds. One species, growing in Kurdistan, a few days' distant from j\Iosul, is a genuine gourd; but there is no probability that it ever flourished on the hot plains of Mosul." The same view is taken by Thomson (L'lud (tnd Book, i, 96 sq.), who saj's that " Orientals never dream of training a castor-oil plant over a booth, or planting it for shade ; and they would have but small respect for any one who did. It is in no wa}^ adapted for that purpose, while tliousands of arbors are covered with various creepers of the gourd famil}'. . . . The gourd grows with extraordinary ra- pidity. In a few days after it has begun to run the whole arbor is covered. It fomis a shade absolutely impenetrable to the sun's rays even at noonday. It flourishes best in the very hottest part of summer. Lastly, when Injured or cut, it withers away with equal rapidit}-." See Jonah.
)tnl Arbnr covered witli a ticjiird-vine.
'2. Wild Gounns (r^V^IS, pakkuqih'; Sept. roXinrr], Tiiig. coloryntkid(t). It is related in 2 Kings iv, o8- 40 that Elisha, having come again to Gilgal, when there was a famine in the land, and many sons of the prophets were assemldod there, he ordered his servant to prepare for them a dish of vegetables : " One went out into the field to gither herbs {orotK), and found a wild vine (!Tia ''Z';, feld-vine), and gatliercd thereof icild gourds (nnr ri"^12, frld pakkuoth) his lap-full, and came and shred them into the pot of pottage, for they knew them not." "So they poured out for the men to eat; but as the}' were eating of the pottage, they cried out, O thou man of God, there is death in the pot; and they could not eat thereof." Though a few other plants have been indicated, the pakkiioth has almost universally been supposed to be one of the family of the gourd or cucumber-like plants, several of which are conspicuous for their bitterness, and a few poisonous, while others, it is well-known, are edi-