Their grain harvest began about the beginning of our April, and lasted for about two months. Summer followed, in June and July, and was the season for gathering the garden fruits. The next two months were still warmer, so that the sheep shearing would have to be overtaken before they set in. During all this time little or no rain falls in Palestine. The country becomes excessively parched, the brooks and springs dry up, and almost the only supply of water is from the pools and reservoirs that have been filled during the winter. October and November are the seed time. “The former rain” falls now. It often falls with violence, fills the dry torrent-beds, and illustrates our Savior’s figure of the rains descending, and the floods coming and beating upon the houses. (Matt. vii: 25, 27.) December and January are the winter months, when frost and snow are not uncommon; February and March are also cold. “The latter rains” fall at this season. About the end of it, “the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land; the fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grapes have a good smell.” (Song of Sol., ii: 11, 13.) Among the wild trees and vegetable products of the country were the cedar, stable and lofty, an emblem of usefulness and beauty (Ps. xcii: 12); the oak, both the smooth and the prickly sort, which grow in great luxuriance in Bashan; the terebinth, or turpentine tree (translated _oak_ in our Bibles), a large evergreen, with spreading branches, often growing singly, and so striking as to mark a district—like the terebinth of Shechem, of Mamre (or Hebron), and of Ophrah; the fir, the cypress, the pine, the myrtle, and the mulberry. The oleander and the prickly pear flourished in most situations. The rose and the lily were the common flowers. Altogether, the number of vegetable products was large and varied; and, in such a country, Solomon’s memory and acquirements could not have been contemptible, when “he spake of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall.”