theelasagnus or wild olive, the gum-styrax plant (_Styrax officinalis_),
the egg-plant, the Egyptian papyrus, the sugar-cane, the scarlet
misletoe, the solanum that produces the "Dead Sea apple" (_Solanum
Sodomceum_), the yellow-flowered acacia, and the liquorice plant. Among
the forms due to high elevation are the famous Lebanon cedar, several
oaks and juniper, the maple, berberry, jessamine, ivy, butcher's broom,
a rhododendron, and the gum-tragacanth plant. The fruits additional to
those of the north are dates, lemons, almonds, shaddocks, and limes.

The chief mineral products of the Empire seem to have been bitumen, with
its concomitants, naphtha and petroleum, salt, sulphur, nitre, copper,
iron, perhaps silver, and several sorts of precious stones. Bitumen was
furnished in great abundance by the springs at Hit or Is, which were
celebrated in the days of Herodotus; it was also procured from Ardericca
(Kir-Ab), and probably from Earn Ormuz, in Susiana, and likewise from
the Dead Sea. Salt was obtainable from the various lakes which had no
outlet, as especially from the Sabakhab, the Bahr-el-Melak, the Dead
Sea, and a small lake near Tadmor or Palmyra. The Dead Sea gave also
most probably both sulphur and nitre, but the latter only in small
quantities. Copper and iron seem to have been yielded by the hills of
Palestine. Silver was perhaps a product of the Anti-Lebanon.

It may be doubted whether any gems were really found in Babylonia
itself, which, being purely alluvial, possesses no stone of any kind.
Most likely the sorts known as Babylonian came from the neighboring
Susiana, whose unexplored mountains may possess many rich treasures.
According to Dionysius, the bed of the Choaspes produced numerous
agates, and it may well be that from the same quarter came that "beryl
more precious than gold," and those "highly reputed sard," which Babylon
seems to have exported to other countries. The western provinces may,