dwarfed specimens near the Tiberias lake.  The banana accompanies the date along the coast, and even grows as far north as Tripoli.  The prickly pear, introduced from America, has completely neutralized itself, and is in general request for hedging.  The fig mulberry (or true sycamore), another southern form, is also common, and grows to a considerable size.  Other denizens of warm climes, unknown in Northern Syria, are the jujube, the tamarisk, theelasagnus or wild olive, the gum-styrax plant (Styrax officinalis), the egg-plant, the Egyptian papyrus, the sugar-cane, the scarlet misletoe, the solanum that produces the “Dead Sea apple” (Solanum Sodomceum), the yellow-flowered acacia, and the liquorice plant.  Among the forms due to high elevation are the famous Lebanon cedar, several oaks and juniper, the maple, berberry, jessamine, ivy, butcher’s broom, a rhododendron, and the gum-tragacanth plant.  The fruits additional to those of the north are dates, lemons, almonds, shaddocks, and limes.

The chief mineral products of the Empire seem to have been bitumen, with its concomitants, naphtha and petroleum, salt, sulphur, nitre, copper, iron, perhaps silver, and several sorts of precious stones.  Bitumen was furnished in great abundance by the springs at Hit or Is, which were celebrated in the days of Herodotus; it was also procured from Ardericca (Kir-Ab), and probably from Earn Ormuz, in Susiana, and likewise from the Dead Sea.  Salt was obtainable from the various lakes which had no outlet, as especially from the Sabakhab, the Bahr-el-Melak, the Dead Sea, and a small lake near Tadmor or Palmyra.  The Dead Sea gave also most probably both sulphur and nitre, but the latter only in small quantities.  Copper and iron seem to have been yielded by the hills of Palestine.  Silver was perhaps a product of the Anti-Lebanon.

It may be doubted whether any gems were really found in Babylonia itself, which, being purely alluvial, possesses no stone of any kind.  Most likely the sorts known as Babylonian came from the neighboring Susiana, whose unexplored mountains may possess many rich treasures.  According to Dionysius, the bed of the Choaspes produced numerous agates, and it may well be that from the same quarter came that “beryl more precious than gold,” and those “highly reputed sard,” which Babylon seems to have exported to other countries.  The western provinces may, however, very probably have furnished the gems which are ascribed to them, as amethysts, which are said to have been found in the neighborhood of Petra, alabaster, which came from near Damascus, and the cyanus, a kind of lapis-lazuli, which was a production of Phoenicia.  No doubt the Babylonian love of gems caused the provinces to be carefully searched for stones; and it is not improbable that they yielded besides the varieties already named, and the other unknown kinds mentioned by Pliny, many, if not most, of the materials which we find to have been used for seals by the ancient people.  These are, cornelian, rock-crystal, chalcedony, onyx, jasper, quartz, serpentine, sienite, haematite, green felspar, pyrites, loadstone, and amazon-stone.