THE PRINCES OF VEGETATION.

This fanciful and high-sounding title was given by the great Swedish botanist, Linnaeus, to a race of plants which are in reality by no means distantly allied to a very humble family—­the family of Rushes.

The great race of Palms puzzled the learned Swede.  He did not know where to put them in his system; so he gave them an appendix all to themselves, and called them the Princes of Vegetation.

The appendix cannot have been a small one, for the Order of Palms is very large.  About five hundred different species are known and named, but there are probably many more.

They are a very beautiful order of plants; indeed, the striking elegance of their forms has secured them a prominence in pictures, poetry, and proverbs, which makes them little less familiar to those who live in countries too cold for them to grow in, than to those whose home, like theirs, is in the tropics.  The name Palm (Latin, Palma) is supposed to have been applied to them from a likeness in the growth of their branches to the outspread palm of the hand; and the fronds of some of the fan-palms are certainly not unlike the human hand, as commonly drawn by street-boys upon doors and walls.

So beautiful a tree, when it flourished in the symbol-loving East, was sure to be invested with poetical and emblematical significance.  Conquerors were crowned with wreaths of palm, which is said to have been chosen as a symbol of victory, because of the elasticity with which it rises after the pressure of the heaviest weight—­an explanation, perhaps, more appropriate to it as the emblem of spiritual triumphs—­the Palm of Martyrdom and the Palms of the Blessed.

But as a religious symbol it is not confined to the Church triumphant.  Not only is the “great multitude which no man can number” represented to us as “clothed in white robes, and palms in their hands”—­the word “palmer” records the fact that he who returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land was known, not only by the cockle-shell on his gown, but by the staff of palm on which he leant.  St. Gregory also alludes to the palm-tree as an accepted emblem of the life of the righteous, and adds that it may well be so, since it is rough and bare below, and expands above into greenness and beauty.

The palm here alluded to is evidently the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera).  This is pre-eminently the palm-tree of the Bible, and was in ancient times abundant in the Holy Land, though, curiously enough, it is now comparatively rare.  Jericho was known as “the city of palm-trees” in the time of Moses (Deut. xxxiv. 3).  It is alluded to again in the times of the Judges (Judges i. 11; iii. 13), and it bore the same title in the days of Ahaz (2 Chron. xxviii. 15).  Josephus speaks of it as still famous for its palm-groves in his day, but it is said that a few years ago only one tree remained, which is now gone.