Box-tree (Isaiah 60:13; Isaiah 41:19). It is not very certain that the box-tree is really denoted by the Hebrew and so translated: but nothing more probable has been suggested, and it agrees well enough with the indications afforded by the texts in which the name occurs.
The box is a native of most parts of Europe. It grows well in England, as at Boxhill, etc. while that from the Levant is most valued in commerce, in consequence of its being highly esteemed by wood-engravers. Turkey box is yielded by Buxus Balearica, a species which is found in Minorca, Sardinia, and Corsica, and also in both European and Asiatic Turkey, and is imported from Constantinople, Smyrna, and the Black Sea. Box is also found on Mount Caucasus, and a species extends even to the Himalaya Mountains. It is much employed in the present day by the wood-engraver, the turner, carver, mathematical instrument maker, and the comb and flute maker.
The box-tree, being a native of mountainous regions, was peculiarly adapted to the calcareous formations of Mount Lebanon, and therefore likely to be brought from thence with the coniferous woods for the building of the temple, and was as well suited as the fir and the pine trees for changing the face of the desert.
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John Kitto was an English biblical scholar of Cornish descent.Born in Plymouth, John Kitto was a sickly child, son of a Cornish stonemason. The drunkenness of his father and the poverty of his family meant that much of his childhood was spent in the workhouse. He had no more than three years of erratic and interrupted education. At the age of twelve John Kitto fell on his head from a rooftop, and became totally and permanently deaf. As a young man he suffered further tragedies, disappointments and much loneliness. His height was 4 ft 8 in, and his accident left him with an impaired sense of balance. He found consolation in browsing at bookstalls and reading any books that came his way.
From these hardships he was rescued by friends who became aware of his mental abilities and encouraged him to write topical articles for local newspapers, arranging eventually for him to work as an assistant in a local library. Here he continued to educate himself.
One of his benefactors was the Exeter dentist Anthony Norris Groves, who in 1824 offered him employment as a dental assistant. Living with the Groves family, Kitto was profoundly influenced by the practical Christian faith of his employer. In 1829 he accompanied Groves on his pioneering mission to Baghdad and served as tutor to Groves's two sons. In 1833 Kitto returned to England via Constantinople, accompanied by another member of the Groves mission, Francis William Newman. Shortly afterwards he married, and in due course had several children.
A London publisher asked Kitto to write up his travel journals for a series of articles in the Penny Magazine, a publication read at that time by a million people in Britain, reprinted in America and translated into French, German and Dutch. Other writing projects followed as readers enquired about his experiences in the East amidst people living in circumstances closely resembling those of Bible times.
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