Note 113 — NO. XVII.—BABYLON.

"The hanging gardens," says Major Rennell, "as they are called, had an area of about three acres and a half, and in them were grown trees of considerable size; and it is not improbable, that they were of a species different from those of the natural growth of the alluvial soil of Babylonia. These trees may have been perpetuated in the same spot where they grew (or seeds from them), notwithstanding that the terraces may have subsided, by the crumbling of the piers and walls that supported them; the ruins of which may form the very eminences, spoken of by M. Niebuhr, and which are covered with a particular kind of trees." That is, with trees different from any that grow between the ruins and the Persian gulf, in which space no other trees are to be found but date and other fruit trees.