Popular Geography of Plants

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1855 Excerpt: ... of Lindley's description. The eye however is refreshed for a mile or two before reaching Cairo, by a shady avenue of Sycamores on one side of the river; but as we approach the town, the banks are so covered with counting-houses and custom-houses, gardens and summer-palaces, iron-foundries and cotton-mills, calico printing establishments and arsenals, that we might as well think of botanizing on the Thames near London. This plant, which the Arabs call El-Kali, is an important article of commerce, and produces the salt called alkali, so extensively nsed in the manufacture of soap and glass. Perhaps it requires a great deal of learning as to the construction of the Pyramids to wonder at them as we ought, but we cannot help thinking that in any other landscape their hard outline would be unendurable; and, as far as usefulness is concerned, that triumph of modern engineering called the barrage, is far more to be admired, by which the Nile is dammed up near the head of the Delta, and carried three canals in three different directions, so as to render a larger proportion of land capable of cultivation. We are doing very little all this time in the botanical department, and are likely to do still less on our journey across the desert to Suez; for not only is the method of travelling--either swinging along on a camel, or being shaken to pieces on a dromedary--highly unfavourable to such pursuits, but the almost entire absence of vegetation makes our idleness a necessity. The only plant we see is now and then a graceful Tamarisk, which we look at with additional interest when we remember that it was a familiar object to the children of Israel in their journeyings, growing as it also does on the desolate coast of the Red Sea, and in the...