' Isn't that funny, Miss Harson?"
"It is very quaint, I think, but I do not dislike it: it is like seeing
faces in pansies; and some people are full of these odd imaginations.
There is a kind of locust, called the clammy-barked, found in the
Southern parts of the United States, which is a smaller tree than the
common locust and has large pale-pink flowers, while the rose acacia is
a very beautiful flowering shrub. The sweet, or honey, locust is
another variety, which is also called the three-thorned acacia, because
the thorns consist of one long spine with two shorter ones projecting
out of it, like little branches, near its base. This is said to display
much of the elegance of the tropical acacia in the minute division and
symmetry of its compound leaves. These are of a light and brilliant
green and lie flat upon the branches, giving them a fan-like appearance
such as we observe in the hemlock."
"But why is it called honey-locust?" asked Malcolm. "Do the bees make
honey in the trunk?"
"No," replied his governess; "the name comes from the sweetness of the
pulp around the seeds, which ripen in large flat pods, and of which boys
and girls are fond. But the flowers of this species are only small
greenish aments. Locust-wood is very durable, and, as it will bear
exposure to all kinds of weather, it is much used in shipbuilding and as
posts for gates. It is thought that the shittah and shittim wood of the
Bible, of which Moses made the greater part of the tables, altars and
planks of the tabernacle, was the same as the black acacia found in the
deserts of Arabia and about Mount Sinai and the mountains which border
on the Red Sea, and is so hard and solid as to be almost incorruptible.
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