the Dead Sea and of the pillar of salt burst forth into wonderful luxuriance.

This book tells us that masses of fiery matter are every day thrown up from the water "as large as a horse"; that though it contains no living thing, it has been shown that men thrown into it cannot die; and finally, as if to prove the worthlessness of devout testimony to the miraculous, he says: "And whoever throws a piece of iron therein, it floats; and whoever throws a feather therein, it sinks to the bottom: and because that is contrary to nature, I was not willing to believe it until I saw it."

The book, of course, mentions Lot's wife; and says that the pillar of salt "stands there to-day," and "has a right salty taste."

Injustice has perhaps been done to the compilers of this famous work in holding them liars of the first magnitude: they simply abhorred skepticism, and thought it meritorious to believe all pious legends. The ideal Mandeville was a man of overmastering faith, and resembled Tertullian in believing some things "because they are impossible"; he was doubtless entirely conscientious; the solemn ending of the book shows that he listened, observed, and wrote under the deepest conviction, and those who re-edited his book were probably just as honest in adding the later stories of pious travelers.

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville,' thus appealing to the popular heart, were most widely read in the monasteries and repeated among the people. Innumerable copies were made in manuscript, and finally in print; and so the old myths received a new life.

In the fifteenth century wonders increased. In 1418 we have the Lord of Caumont, who makes a pilgrimage and gives. us a statement which is the result of the theological reasoning of centuries, and especially interesting as a typical example of the theological method in contrast with the scientific. He could not understand how the blessed waters of the Jordan could be allowed to mingle with the accursed waters of the Dead Sea. In spite, then, of the eye of sense, he beheld the water with the eye of faith, and calmly announced that the Jordan water passes through the Sea, but that the two masses of water are not mingled. As to the salt statue of Lot's wife, he declares it to be still existing; and copying a table of indulgences granted to the Church by pious pilgrims, he puts down the visit to the salt statue as giving an indulgence of seven years.

Toward the end of the century we have another traveler yet more influential: Bernard of Breydenbach, Dean of Mainz. His book of travels was published in 1486, at the famous press of Schoeffer, and in various translations it was spread through Europe, exercising an influence wide and deep. His first important notice of the Dead Sea is as follows: "In this, Tirus the serpent is found, and from him the Tiriac medicine is made. He is blind; and so full of venom that there is no remedy for his bite excepting cutting off the bitten part. He can only be taken by striking him and making him angry; then his venom flies into his head and tail." Breydenbach calls the Dead Sea "the chimney of hell," and repeats the old story as to the miraculous solvent for its bitumen. He too makes the statement that the holy water of the Jordan does not mingle with the accursed water of the infernal Sea; but increases the miracle which Caumont had announced by saying that although the waters appear to come. together, the Jordan is really absorbed in the earth before it reaches the Sea.

As to Lot's wife, various travelers at that time had various fortunes. Some, like Caumont and Breydenbach, took her continued existence for granted; some, like Count John of Solms, saw her and were greatly edified; some, like Hans Werli, tried to find her and could not, but like St. Silvia a thousand years before, were none the less edified by the idea that for some inscrutable purpose, the Sea had been allowed to hide her from them: some found her larger than they expected,- even forty feet high, as was the salt pillar which happened to be standing at the visit of Commander Lynch in 1848,- but this only added a new proof to the miracle; for the text was remembered, "There were giants in those days."

Out of the mass of works of pilgrims during the fifteenth century, I select just one more as typical of the theological view then dominant; and this is the noted book of Felix Fabri, a preaching friar of Ulm. I select him, because even so eminent an authority in our own time as Dr. Edward Robinson declares him to have been the most thorough, thoughtful, and enlightened traveler of that century.

Fabri is greatly impressed by the wonders of the Dead Sea, and typical of his honesty influenced by faith is his account of the Dead Sea fruit: he describes it with almost perfect accuracy, but adds the statement that when mature it is "filled with ashes and cinders.»

As to the salt statue, he says: "We saw the place between the sea and Mount Segor, but could not see the statue itself because we were too far distant to see anything of human size: but we saw it with firm faith, because we believed Scripture, which speaks of it; and we were filled with wonder.”

To sustain absolute faith in the statue, he reminds his readers that "God is able even of these stones to raise up seed to Abraham,” and goes into a long argument, discussing such transformations as those of King Atlas and Pygmalion's statue, with a multitude of others,-winding up with the case given in the miracles of St. Jerome, of a heretic who was changed into a log of wood, which was then burned.

He gives a statement of the Hebrews that Lot's wife received her peculiar punishment because she had refused to add salt to the food of the angels when they visited her; and he preaches a short sermon, in which he says that as salt is the condiment of food, so the salt statue of Lot's wife "gives us a condiment of wisdom."

There were indeed many discrepancies in the testimony of travelers regarding the salt pillar,- so many, in fact, that at a later period the learned Dom Calmet acknowledged that they shook his belief in the whole matter; but during this earlier time, under the complete sway of the theological spirit, these difficulties only gave new and more glorious opportunities for faith.

For if a considerable interval occurred between the washing of one salt pillar out of existence and the washing of another into existence, the idea arose that the statue, by virtue of the soul which still remained in it, had departed on some mysterious excursion. Did it happen that one statue was washed out one year in one place and another statue another year in another place, this difficulty was surmounted by believing that Lot's wife still walked about. Did it happen that a salt column was undermined by the rains and fell, this was believed to be but another sign of life. Did a pillar happen to be covered in part by the sea, this was enough to arouse the belief that the statue from time to time descended into the Dead Sea depths,- possibly to satisfy that old fatal curiosity regarding her former neighbors. Did some smaller block of salt happen to be washed out near the statue, it was believed that a household dog, also transformed into salt, had followed her back from beneath the deep. Did more statues

than one appear at one time, that simply made the mystery more impressive.

In facts now so easy of scientific explanation, the theologians found wonderful matter for argument.

One great question among them was whether the soul of Lot's wife did really remain in the statue. On one side it was insisted that as Holy Scripture declares that Lot's wife was changed into a pillar of salt, and as she was necessarily made up of a soul and a body, the soul must have become part of the statue. This argument was clinched by citing that passage in the Book of Wisdom in which the salt pillar is declared to be still standing as "the monument of an unbelieving soul." On the other hand, it was insisted that the soul of the woman must have been incorporeal and immortal, and hence could not have been changed into a substance corporeal and mortal. Naturally, to this it would be answered that the salt pillar was no more corporeal than the ordinary materials of the human body, and that it had been made miraculously immortal, and "with God all things are possible." Thus were opened long vistas of theological discussion.

As we enter the sixteenth century, the Dead Sea myths, and especially the legends of Lot's wife, are still growing. In 1507 Father Anselm of the Minorites declares that the sea sometimes covers the feet of the statue, sometimes the legs, sometimes the whole body.

In 1555, Gabriel Giraudet, priest at Puy, journeyed through Palestine. His faith was robust, and his attitude toward the myths of the Dead Sea is seen by his declaration that its waters are so foul that one can smell them at a distance of three leagues; that straw, hay, or feathers thrown into them will sink, but that iron and other metals will float; that criminals have been kept in them three or four days and could not drown. As to Lot's wife, he says that he found her "lying there, her back toward heaven, converted into salt stone; for I touched her, and put a piece of her into my mouth, and she tasted salt."

At the centre of these legends we see, then, the idea that though there were no living beasts in the Dead Sea, the people of the overwhelmed cities were still living beneath its waters, probably in hell; that there was life in the salt statue, and that it was still curious regarding its old neighbors.

GILBERT WHITE

(1720-1793)

HE Natural History of Selborne,' written by Gilbert White, an English clergyman of the eighteenth century, belongs to literature rather than to science, because of its poetical spirit of intimacy with the living world, making knowledge as much the fruit of intuition as of intellectual research. Like Thoreau's works, it springs from the heart of its author; lacking all the severity of a scientific treatise, warm instead with the humanity that feels itself close to all happy living things.

White of Selborne was, however, a naturalist of no mean rank; although his field of research was limited, including only the parishes in the South of England to which he ministered, and of which Selborne furnished him the greater part of the material for his famous book. In a letter to Thomas Pennant, he thus describes the geography of this parish, every inch of whose ground he knew and loved :

"The parish of Selborne lies in the extreme eastern corner of the county of Hampshire, bordering on the county of Sussex, and not far from the county of Surrey; it is about fifty miles southwest of London, in latitude 51°, and near midway between the towns of Alton and Petersfield. Being very large and extensive, it abuts on twelve parishes, two of which are in Sussex,— viz., Trotton and Rogate. If you begin from the south, and proceed westward, the adjacent parishes are Emshot, Newton Valence, Faringdon, Harteley-Mandent, Great Wardleham, Kingsley, Hedleigh, Bramshot, Trotton, Rogate, Lysse, and Greatham. The soils of this district are almost as various and diversified as the views and aspects. The high part to the southwest consists of a vast hill of chalk, rising three hundred feet above the village; and is divided into a sheep-down, the high wood, and a long hanging wood called the Hanger. The covert of this eminence is altogether beech; the most lovely of all forest trees, whether we consider its smooth rind or bark, its glossy foliage, or graceful pendulous boughs. The down or sheep-walk is a pleasant park-like spot of about one mile by half that space, jutting out on the verge of the hill country, where it begins to break down into the plains, and commanding a very engaging view; being an assemblage of hill, dale, woodlands, heath, and water.»

In this parish of Selborne, Gilbert White was born in 1720; was educated at Basingstoke, under Warton the father of the poet, and at Oriel College, Oxford, where he obtained a fellowship in 1744. He removed to a country curacy in 1753, but returned to Selborne again In 1758 he obtained a sinecure living from his college;

in 1755.