The illustration represents the Crown of Thorns, worn by our Saviour, his coat without seams, called _tunica inconsutilis_; the sponge; the reed by means of which the Jews gave our Lord vinegar and gall; and one of the nails wherewith He was fastened to the Cross. All these relics Maundevile tells us he saw at Constantinople. Of what particular plant was composed the crown of Thorns which the Roman soldiers plaited and placed on the Saviour’s head, has long been a matter of dispute. Gerarde says it was the _Paliurus aculeatus_, a sharp-spined shrub, which he calls Christ’s Thorn; and the old herbalist quotes Bellonius, who had travelled in the Holy Land, and who stated that this shrubby Thorn was common in Judea, and that it was “The Thorne wherewith they crowned our Saviour Christ.” The melancholy distinction has, however, been variously conferred on the Buckthorns, _Rhamnus Spina Christi_ and _R. Paliurus_; the Boxthorn, the Barberry, the Bramble, the Rose-briar, the Wild Hyssop, the Acanthus, or Brank-ursine, the _Spartium villosum_, the Holly (called in Germany, _Christdorn_), the Acacia, or _Nabkha_ of the Arabians, a thorny plant, very suitable for the purpose, since its flexible twigs could be twisted into a chaplet, and its small but pointed thorns would cause terrible wounds; and, in France, the Hawthorn--the _épine noble_. The West Indian negroes state that Christ’s crown was composed of a branch of the Cashew-tree, and that in consequence one of the golden petals of its blossom became black and blood-stained. The Reed Mace (_Typha latifolia_) is generally represented as the reed placed, in mockery, by the soldiers in the Saviour’s right hand. The Wood of the Cross. According to the legend connected with the Tree of Adam, the wood of the Cross on which our Lord was crucified was Cedar--a beam hewn from a tree which incorporated in itself the essence of the Cedar, the Cypress, and the Olive (the vegetable emblems of the Holy Trinity). Curzon, in his ‘Monasteries of the Levant,’ gives a tradition that the Cedar was cut down by Solomon, and buried on the spot afterwards called the Pool of Bethesda; that about the time of the Passion of our Blessed Lord the wood floated, and was used by the Jews for the upright posts of the Cross. Another legend makes the Cross of four kinds of wood representing the four quarters of the globe, or all mankind: it is not, however, agreed what those four kinds of wood were, or their respective places in the Cross. Some say they were the Palm, the Cedar, the Olive, and the Cypress; hence the line-- “_Ligna crucis Palma, Cedrus, Cupressus, Oliva._” In place of the Palm or the Olive, some claim the mournful honour for the Pine and the Box; whilst there are others who aver it was made entirely of Oak. Another account states the wood to have been the Aspen, and since that fatal day its leaves have never ceased trembling with horror.