Note 57 — Chapter II

Some recent observations of the learned traveller Wetzstein are worthy of special notice. "The soil of the Haurân," he remarks, "produces, in its primitive condition, much wild rye, which is not known as a cultivated plant in Syria, and much wild barley and oats. These cereals precisely resemble the corresponding cultivated plants in leaf, ear, size, and height of straw, but their grains are sensibly flatter and poorer in flour."—Reisebericht über Haurân und die Trachonen, p. 40.