drier, yet it has been argued with great force from the identity of the
modern with the ancient vegetation, that in reality there can have
been no considerable change. If then there has been such permanency of
climate in the two regions where the greatest alteration seems to have
taken place in the circumstances whereby climate is usually affected,
it can scarcely be thought that elsewhere any serious change has been
brought about.

The chief vegetable productions of Babylonia Proper in ancient times
are thus enumerated by Berosus. "The land of the Babylonians," he
says, "produces wheat as an indigenous plant," and has also barley,
and lentils, and vetches, and sesame; the banks of the streams and the
marshes supply edible roots, called gongoe, which have the taste
of barley-cakes. Palms, too, grow in the country, and apples, and
fruit-trees of various kinds. Wheat, it will be observed, and barley are
placed first, since it was especially as a grain country that Babylonia
was celebrated. The testimonies of Herodotus, Theophrastus, Strabo, and
Pliny as to the enormous returns which the Babylonian farmers obtained
from their corn lands have been already cited. No such fertility is
known anywhere in modern times; and, unless the accounts are grossly
exaggerated, we must ascribe it, in part, to the extraordinary vigor of
a virgin soil, a deep and rich alluvium; in part, perhaps, to a peculiar
adaptation of the soil to the wheat plant, which the providence of God
made to grow spontaneously in this region, and nowhere else, so far as
we know, on the whole face of the earth.

Besides wheat, it appears that barley, millet, and lentils were
cultivated for food, while vetches were grown for beasts, and sesame
for the sake of the oil which can be expressed from its seed. All grew
luxuriantly, and the returns of the barley in particular are stated at a