As it has been my endeavour, throughout this history, to leave nothing unexplained that may assist the reader in understanding the different subjects that have been treated in the course of it, I think myself obliged to say a few words concerning the manner of arranging this Appendix. With regard to the Natural History, it must occur to every one, that, however numerous and respectable they may be who have dedicated themselves entirely to this study, they bear but a very small proportion to those who, for amusement or instruction, seek the miscellaneous and general occurrences of life that ordinarily compose a series of travels.

By presenting the two subjects promiscuously, I was apprehensive of incommoding and disgusting both species of readers. Every body that has read Tournefort, and some other authors of merit of that kind, must be sensible how unpleasant it is to have a very rapid, well-told, interesting narrative, concerning the arts, government, or ruins of Corinth, Athens, or Ephesus, interrupted by the appearance of a nettle or daffodil, from some particularity which they may possess, curious and important in the eye of a botanist, but invisible and indifferent to an ordinary beholder.

To prevent this, I have placed what belongs to Natural History in one volume or appendix, and in so doing I hope to meet the approbation of my scientific botanical readers, by laying the different subjects all together before them, without subjecting them to the trouble of turning over different books to get at any one of them. The figures, landscapes, and a few other plates of this kind, are illustrations of what immediately passes in the page; these descriptions seldom occupy more than a few lines, and therefore such plates cannot be more ornamentally or usefully placed than opposite to the page which treats of them.

Some further consideration was necessary in placing the maps, and the Appendix appeared to me to be by far the most proper part for them. The maps, whether such as are general of the country, or those adapted to serve particular itineraries, should always be laid open before the reader, till he has made himself perfectly master of the bearings and distances of the principal rivers, mountains, or provinces where the scene of action is then laid. Maps that fold lie generally but one way, and are mostly of strong paper, so that when they are doubled by an inattentive hand, contrary to the original fold they got at binding, they break, and come asunder in quarters and square pieces, the map is destroyed, and the book ever after incomplete; whereas, even if this misfortune happens to a map placed in the Appendix, it may either be taken out and joined anew, or replaced at very little expence by a fresh map from the bookseller.

I shall detain the reader but a few minutes with what I have further to say concerning the particular subjects of Natural History of which I have treated. The choice I know, though it may meet with the warmest concurrence from one set of readers, will not perhaps be equally agreeable to the taste of others. This I am heartily sorry for. My endeavour and wish is to please them all, if it were possible, as it is not.

The first subject I treat of is trees, shrubs, or plants; and in the selecting of them I have preferred those which, having once been considered as subjects of consequence by the ancients, and treated largely of by them, are now come, from want of the advantage of drawing, lapse of time, change of climate, alteration of manners, or accident befallen the inhabitants of a country, to be of doubtful existence and uncertain description; the ascertaining of many of these is necessary to the understanding the classics.

It is well known to every one the least versant in this part of Natural History, what a prodigious revolution has happened in the use of drugs, dyes, and gums, since the time of Galen, by the introduction of those Herculean medicines drawn from minerals. The discovery of the new world, besides, has given us vegetable medicines nearly as active and decisive as those of minerals themselves. Many found in the new world grow equally in the old, from which much confusion has arisen in the history of each, that will become inextricable in a few generations, unless attended to by regular botanists, assisted by attentive and patient draughts-men ignorant of system, or at least not slaves to it, who set down upon paper what with their eyes they see does exist, without amusing themselves with imagining, according to rules they have themselves made, what it regularly should be. One drawing of this kind, painfully and attentively made, has more merit, and promotes true knowledge more certainly, than a hundred horti sicci which constantly produce imaginary monsters, and throw a doubt upon the whole. The modern and more accurate system of botany has fixed its distinctions of genus and species upon a variety of such fine parts naturally so fragil, that drying, spreading, and pressing with the most careful hands, must break away and destroy some of those parts. These deficient in one plant, exiting in another in all other respects exactly similar, are often, I fear, construed into varieties, or different species, and well if the misfortune goes no farther. They are precisely of the same bad consequence as an inaccurate drawing, where these parts are left out through inattention, or design.

After having bestowed my first consideration upon these that make a principal figure in ancient history, which are either not at all or imperfectly known now, my next attention has been to those which have their uses in manufactures, medicine, or are used as food in the countries I am describing.

The next I have treated are the plants, or the varieties of plants, unknown, whether in genus or species. In these I have dealt sparingly in proportion to the knowledge I yet have acquired in this subject, which is every day increasing, and appears perfectly attainable.

The history of the birds and beasts is the subject which occupies the next place in this Appendix; and the rule I follow here, is to give the preference to such of each kind as are mentioned in scripture, and concerning which doubts have arisen. A positive precept that says, Thou shalt not eat such beast, or such bird, is absolutely useless, as long as it is unknown what that bird and what that animal is.

Many learned men have employed themselves with success upon these topics, yet much remains still to do; for it has generally happened, that those perfectly acquainted with the language in which the scriptures were written, have never travelled nor seen the animals of Judea, Palestine, or Arabia; and again, such as have travelled in these countries, and seen the animals in question, have been either not at all, or but superficially acquainted with the original language of scripture. It has been my earnest desire to employ the advantage I possess in both these requisites, to throw as much light as possible upon the doubts that have arisen. I hope I have done this freely, fairly, and candidly; if I have at all succeeded, I have obtained my reward.

As for the fishes and other marine productions of the Red Sea, my industry has been too great for my circumstances. I have by me above 300 articles from the Arabian gulf alone, all of equal merit with those specimens which I have here laid before the public. Though I have selected a very few articles only, and these perhaps not the most curious, yet as they are connected with the trade of the Red Sea as it was carried on in ancient times, and may again be resumed, and as of this I have treated professedly, I have preferred these, as having a classical foundation, to many others more curious and less known. Engraving in England has advanced rapidly towards perfection, and the prices, as we may suppose, have kept proportion with the improvement. My small fortune, already impaired with the expence of the journey, will not, without doing injustice to my family, bear the additional one, of publishing these numerous articles, which, however desirable it might be, would amount to a sum which in me it would not be thought prudent to venture.

If Egypt had been a new, late, and extraordinary creation, the gift of the Nile in these latter times, as some modern philosophers have pretended, the least thing we could have expected would have been to find some new and extraordinary plants accompany it, very different in figure and parts from those of ancient times, made by the old unphilosophical way, the fiat of the Creator of the universe. But just the contrary has happened. Egypt hath no trees, shrubs, or plants peculiar to it. All are brought thither from Syria, Arabia, Africa, and India; and these are so far from being the gift of the Nile, as scarcely to accustom themselves to suffer the quantity of water that for five months covers the land of Egypt by the inundation of that river.

Even many of those that the necessities of particular times have brought thither to supply wants with which they could not dispense, and those which curious hands have brought from foreign countries are not planted at random; for they would not grow in Egypt, but in chosen places formerly artificially raised above level, for gardens, and pleasure ground, where they are at this day watered by machinery; or upon banks above the calishes, which though near the water, are yet above the level of its annual inundation. Such is the garden of Mattareah, sometimes filled with exotic plants from all the countries around, from the veneration or superstition, pilgrims and dervishies, the only travellers of the east, have for that spot, the supposed abode of the Virgin Mary when she fled into Egypt, sometimes, as at present, so neglected as to have scarce one foreign or curious plant in it.

The first kind of these adventitious productions, and the oldest inhabitant of Egypt brought there for use, is the sycamore, called Giumez1 by the Arabs, which from its size, the facility with which it is sawn into the thinnest planks, and the largeness of these planks corresponding to the immense size of the tree, was most usefully adapted to the great demand they then had for mummy-chests, or coffins, which are made of this tree only: in order to add to its value, we may mention another supposed quality, its incorruptibility, very capable of giving it a preference, as coinciding with the ideas which led the Egyptians to those fantastic attempts of making the body eternal.

This last property, I suppose, is purely imaginary, for though it be true, tradition says, that all the mummy-chests, which have been found from former ages, were made of sycamore, though the same is the persuasion of latter times, and the fact is so far proven by all the mummy-chests now found being of that wood, yet I will not take upon me to vouch, that incorruptibility is a quality of this particular tree. I believe that seasoned elm, oak, or ash, perhaps even fir, laid in the dry sands of Egypt perfectly screened from moisture, and defended from the outward air, as all mummy-chests are, would likewise appear incorruptible; and my reason is, that having got made, while at Cairo, a case for a telescope of sycamore plank, I buried it in my garden after I came home from my travels, so as to leave it covered by half a foot of earth; in less than four years it was entirely putrid and rotten. And another telescope case of the cedar of Lebanon appeared much less decayed, though even in this last there were evident signs of corruption. But even suppose it true, that these planks have been found incorruptible, a doubt may still arise, whether they do not owe this quality to a kind of varnish of resinous materials with which I have seen almost all the mummy-chests covered, and to which materials the preservation of the mummy itself is in part certainly owing. The sycamore is a native of that low warm stripe of country between the Red Sea and mountains of Abyssinia; we saw a number of very fine ones before we came to Taranta; they are also in Syria about Sidon, but inferior in size to the former; they do not seem to thrive in Arabia, for want of moisture.

All the other vegetable productions of Egypt have been in a fluctuating state from one year to another. We find them in Prosper Alpinus, and by his authority we seek for them in that country. In Egypt we find them no more; through neglect, they are rotten and gone, but we meet them flourishing in Nubia, Abyssinia, and Arabia Felix, and these are the countries whence the curious first brought them, and from which, by some accident similar to the first, they may again appear in Egypt.

Prosper Alpinus’s work then, so far from being a collection of plants and trees of Egypt, may be said to be a treatise of plants that are not in Egypt, but by accident; they are gleanings of natural history from Syria, Arabia, Nubia, Abyssinia, Persia, Malabar, and Indostan, of which, as far as I could discern or discover, seven species only remained when I was in Egypt, mostly trees of such a growth as to be out of the power of every thing but the ax.

The plant that I shall now speak of, the Papyrus, is a strong proof of this, and is a remarkable instance of the violent changes these subjects have undergone in a few ages. It was at the first the repository of learning and of record; it was the vehicle of knowledge from one nation to another; its uses were so extended, that it came to be even the food of man, and yet we are now disputing what this plant was, and what was its figure, and whether or not it is to be found in Egypt.

A gentleman2 at the head of the literary world, who from his early years has dedicated himself to the study of the theory of this science, and at a riper age has travelled through the world in the more agreeable pursuit of the practical part of it, hath assured me, that, unless from bad drawings, he never had an idea of what this plant was till I first gave him a very fine specimen. The Count de Caylus says, that having heard there was a specimen of this plant in Paris, he used his utmost endeavours to find it, but when brought to him, it appeared to be a cyperus of a very common, well-known kind. With my own hands, not without some labour and risk, I collected specimens from Syria, from the river Jordan, from two different places in Upper and Lower Egypt, from the lakes Tzana and Gooderoo in Abyssinia; and it was with the utmost pleasure I found they were in every particular intrinsically the same, without any variation or difference, from what this plant has been described by the ancients; only I thought that those of Egypt, the middle of the two extremes, were stronger, fairer, and fully a foot taller than those in Syria and Abyssinia.