Читать книгу The People of Palestine. An enlarged edition of "The Peasantry of Palestine, Life, Manners and Customs of the Village" онлайн

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We shall have to call winter the season of rain, flowers and travel. Rain ushers in the winter and also closes it. To the middle and latter part of that season is due the bursting of the blossoms and a push that sends flowers scattering into the first months of the dry season.^[31] Travel might find a better time than much of the winter, but then it is cool and if it rains, why, that is the way of the country, and this explanation often suffices.

DONKEY AT THE THRESHING FLOOR WITH A LOAD OF WHEAT

On the flowers of the country Dr. Post’s book offers a mine of information for those skilled enough in the elements of botany to make use of it. The little booklets of pressed specimens offered for sale, when fresh, give an excellent idea of the variety of wild-flower life in Palestine. Mrs. Hannah Zeller, a daughter of former Bishop Gobat of Jerusalem, and the wife of the late Rev. John Zeller of Nazareth and Jerusalem, has been most successful in reproducing in color many of the flowers of Palestine. Mrs. Zeller’s book of color plates, published some years ago, is now hard to secure. She still has the originals and an even larger collection which awaits a publisher. Until some such publication in color is attempted it will be difficult to describe in writing the unusual splendor and variety of Palestine’s wild flowers.