Moor, the author of "Oriental Fragments," while noting that it does not appear that the sycamore was especially a mystical tree among any ancient people, and that he does not see anything mystical or peculiar in it, says:--"but here may be traced another link connecting through distant countries the chain of mystery in this line of thought--that is, of the mysticism of clefts or ionic forms and transit and trees. Those beautiful and interesting objects of producing and reproducing nature connect themselves, in the mystic contemplative eye, with all that is beautiful and interesting, and poetical and profound. They point up to the heavens, they strike down to Tartarus, but are still of earth:--a Brahmanal triad expressed by the Sanscrit word _bhurbhuvaswah_--heaven, earth, sky--a vastly profound trisyllabic-mono-verbal-mythos; holding, like the mighty Aum, or Om, in mystic combination, the elementals of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva." The commendable delicacy, generally speaking of Mohammedans, and the prosaic nature of their religion, forbid sexual allusions in their writings, and without impugning their fastidiousness on that point--not indeed always observable even in the _Koran_--we find there, and in the commentaries, a connection of birth and tree not very unlike what has been told or shadowed respecting Juno Samia, or Latona, and the Hindu Samia. In the nineteenth _Sura_ or chapter of the _Koran_ entitled "Mary," much concerning the miraculous conception occurs. Having praised St. John, as a "devout person, and dutiful towards his parents; not proud or rebellious," and invoked a blessing on him in these words: "Peace be on him, the day whereon he was born, and the day whereon he shall die, and the day whereon he shall be raised to life;" the prophet continues: "And remember the story of Mary when the pains of child-birth came upon her near the trunk of a palm tree." "A withered trunk," adds a commentator, "without any head or verdure; notwithstanding which, though in the winter season, it miraculously supplied her with fruits for her nourishment." "And he who was beneath her," continues the Koran, "called to her saying, shake the palm tree, and it shall let fall ripe dates upon thee ready gathered." Commentators differ as to whether it was the infant or the angel Gabriel who so called to the mother. They say "the dry trunk revived and shot forth green leaves, and a head laden with ripe fruit." The note in Sale's translation says: "It has been observed that the Mohammedan account of the delivery of the Virgin Mary very much resembles that of Latona, as described by the poets, not only in this circumstance of their laying hold on a palm-tree (though some say Latona embraced an olive-tree, or an olive and a palm, or else two laurels), but also in that of their infants speaking."