reat height. They at length
alight, cover everything, devour everything, and, propagating their
species, die within a few days: nothing, not a blade of vegetation,
remains on the region where they alighted.

* Loftus says that he himself had witnessed in the
neighbourhood of Bagdad during the daytime birds perched on
the palm trees in an exhausted condition, and panting with
open beaks. The inhabitants of Bagdad during the summer pass
their nights on the housetops, and the hours of day in
passages within, expressly constructed to protect them from
the heat.

Notwithstanding these drawbacks, the country was not lacking in
resources. The soil was almost as fertile as the loam of Egypt, and,
like the latter, rewarded a hundredfold the labour of the inhabitants.*
Among the wild herbage which spreads over the country in the spring,
and clothes it for a brief season with flowers, it was found that some
plants, with a little culture, could be rendered useful to men and
beasts. There were ten or twelve different species of pulse to choose
from--beans, 'lentils, chick-peas, vetches, kidney beans, onions,
cucumbers, egg-plants, "gombo," and pumpkins. From the seed of the
sesame an oil was expressed which served for food, while the castor-oil
plant furnished that required for lighting. The safflower and henna
supplied the women with dyes for the stuffs which they manufactured from
hemp and flax. Aquatic plants were more numerous than on the banks
of the Nile, but they did not occupy such an important place among
food-stuffs. The "lily bread" of the Pharaohs would have seemed meagre
fare to people accustomed from early times to wheaten bread. Wheat and
barley are considered to be indigenous on the plains of the Euphrates;
it was supposed to be here that they were first cultivated in Western
Asia, and that they spread from hence to Syria, Egypt, and the whole
of Europe.** "The soil there is so favourable to the growth of cereals,
that it yields usually two hundredfold, and in places of exceptional
fertility three hundredfold. The leaves of the wheat and barley have a
width of four digits. As for the millet and sesame, which in altitude
are as great as trees, I will not state their height, although I know
it from experience, being convinced that those who have not lived in
Babylonia would regard my statement with incredulity." Herodotus in his
enthusiasm exaggerated the matter, or perhaps, as a ge