The only one that remains of the senses is that of smelling, the diminution of which in old men, he describes with equal elegance and brevity in this manner: _the almond tree shall flower_. By which words he seems to mean, that old people, as if they lived in a perpetual winter, no longer perceive the agreeable odors exhaling from plants and flowers in the spring and summer seasons. That this tree flowers in winter, we learn from Pliny, who in treating of it says: _The almond tree flowers the first of all trees, in the month of January_.[81] I am not to learn, that these words are by most interpreters understood as relating to grey hairs, which being generally a sure token of old age, they would have us believe, are denoted by the white flowers of the almond tree. But then, who can imagine, that this wise author, after having indicated the defects of four of the senses, by clear and distinct marks, would designedly pass over the fifth in silence? Besides, white hairs are by no means to be esteemed a sure and indubitable token of old-age; since there are not a few to be found, who turn gray in the middle stage of life, before their bodily strength is any ways impaired. Moreover, what they say of the flowers of the almond tree, does not seem to agree with the things they mean by them: for they are not, strictly speaking, white, but of a purplish cast. Thus far concerning the senses: let us proceed to the remaining part. [81] _Lib. xvi. §. 42._ The scrotal rupture is a disease common to persons far advanced in years; whether it be formed by the intestine or omentum slipping down into the scrotum, or proceed from a humor distending that part. In either case the part is tumefied. This pernicious disease the Preacher thought proper to compare to a grasshopper. _The grasshopper_, says he, _shall be a burthen, Oneri erit locusta_. For thus the Hebrew phrase is more literally translated, than by _convenient cicadæ, the cicadæ shall come together_, as the learned Castalio has rendered it. Indeed the Vulgate version has _impinguabitur locusta_, _the grasshopper shall be fatted_. The Septuagint Παχυνθῆ ἡ ἀχρίς. _The grasshopper shall be fatted._ The Arabic version, turned into Latin, _pinguescet locusta_, _The grasshopper shall grow fat_. But our English translation, _The grasshopper shall be a burden_. It is well known, that the Hebrew language is always modest, and that the sacred Writers, in expressing such things as belong to the genital members, abstain from indecent and obscene words, for fear of offending chaste ears, and therefore borrow similitudes from any other things at discretion. Which is particularly observable in the _Canticum Canticorum_, or _Solomon_’s _Song_, written by our Author. Now the grasshopper, or locust, is an odd-shaped animal, made up chiefly of belly; and therefore, especially when full of eggs, may be said to bear some resemblance to a scrotum, swoln by a rupture.