The Cynicks in _Athenæus_ make iterated Courses of Lentils, and prefer that Diet before the Luxury of _Seleucus_. The present Ægyptians, who are observed by _Alpinus_ to be the fattest Nation, and Men to have breasts like Women, owe much, as he conceiveth, unto the Water of _Nile_, and their Diet of Rice, Pease, Lentils and white Cicers. The Pulse-eating Cynicks and Stoicks, are all very long livers in _Laertius_. And _Daniel_ must not be accounted of few years, who, being carried away Captive in the Reign of _Joachim_, by King _Nebuchadnezzar_, lived, by Scripture account, unto the first year of _Cyrus_.
16. _And Jacob took Rods of green Poplar, and of the Hazel and the Chesnut Tree, and pilled white streaks in them, and made the white appear which was in the Rods_, etc. Men multiply the Philosophy of _Jacob_, who, beside the benediction of God, and the powerfull effects of imagination, raised in the Goats and Sheep from pilled and party-coloured objects, conceive that he chose out these particular Plants above any other, because he understood they had a particular virtue unto the intended effects, according unto the conception of _Georgius Venetus_.[192]
Whereto you will hardly assent, at least till you be better satisfied and assured concerning the true species of the Plants intended in the Text, or find a clearer consent and uniformity in the Translation: For what we render Poplar, Hazel and Chesnut, the Greek translateth _Virgam styracinam, nucinam, plataninam_, which some also render a Pomegranate: and so observing this variety of interpretations concerning common and known Plants among us, you may more reasonably doubt, with what propriety or assurance others less known be sometimes rendred unto us.
[Sidenote: _Lilies of the Field._ Matt. 6. 28.]
17. Whether in the Sermon of the Mount, the _Lilies of the Field_ did point at the proper Lilies, or whether those Flowers grew wild in the place where our Saviour preached, some doubt may be made: because Κρίνον the word in that place is accounted of the same signification with Λείριον, and that in _Homer_ is taken for all manner of specious Flowers: so received by _Eustachius_, _Hesychius_, and the Scholiast upon _Apollonius Rhodius_, Καθόλου τὰ ἄνθη Λείρια λέγεται. And Κρίνον is also received in the same latitude, not signifying onely Lilies, but applied unto Daffodils, Hyacinths, Iris's, and the Flowers of _Colocynthis_.