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seasons of the year; yet they are far from being generally applicable, since heat is regulated not merely by latitude, but by its proximity to, or remoteness from, the sea; by the nature of the soil, and the degree of elevation. Thus, the air is much colder in the mountainous parts than on the coast; and Shaphet, in Galilee, from its height of situation, is so fresh and cool, that the heats of summer are scarcely felt; while about Jericho, in the neighbourhood of Jordan, it is extremely troublesome and even fatal.b

SECT. V.

Agriculture of Judea.

Time of ploughing; form of their plough; the ox goad; their manner of sowing; diseases of grain; blasting or blight; mildew; hoar frost; thunder showers; caterpillar; locusts; harvest in Judea. The barley harvest; wheat harvest; manner of reaping by pulling up; cutting with a sickle; harvest a season of joy; sheaves, but no shocks in Judea; threshing the grain by a staff; flail; feet of cattle; the drag; the wain with iron wheels or teeth : winnowing by the shovel and fan; threshing floors in airy situations; straw used as fodder; grain preserved in earthen jars, or heaps in the fields, or subterraneous repositories: these last sometimes sealed. Grinding corn by the hand-mill; the work of women, at day-break; corn ground in a mill wrought by asses.

We have no allusions in Scripture as to the connexion between astronomy and agriculture; but it is well known that the Greeks and Romans were guided in their agricultural operations by the rising and setting of certain stars; and it is not unlikely that the Jews were so likewise, although they are not particularly mentioned. Let us, then, before we collect and compare the modern practice in the East with that of Scripture, begin with the hints that Virgil has given us in his Georgics, and more especially that Hesiod has left in

Reland, Palest. p. 387.

Egmont and Heyman, vol. ii. p. 47.

his excellent treatise entitled, Εργων και Ημερών, and of which the Georgics are an evident imitation. In Italy, Virgil directs his countrymen to give a light furrow to poor land at the rising of Arcturus, or about the middle of September, lest the scanty moisture should forsake the sandy soil if they ploughed it sooner. Between the time that the sun entered Libra, which was at the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice, or the 22d of December, was the season for sowing barley, flax, and the poppy. When the dog-star had set, and Taurus had opened the year, they sowed beans, trefoil, and millet; and wheat and other strong bearded grain, when the Pleiades were set in the morning, and the Gnossian star of Ariadne's crown. Some, indeed, began before the setting of Maia, one of the Pleiades, but they were mocked with empty ears: and vetches, kidney-beans, and Egyptian lentils, were planted, when Boötes set. Besides which particular directions, he tells us in general, that the Pleiades, Hyades, and the bright star of Lycaon, in the Ursa Major, were well known to husbandmen and mariners; that the stars of Arcturus, the days of the kids, and the shining dragon, were also observed by the same classes of men; and that the rainy kids arising from the west were the cause of the storm of rain. Such are the hints that are given us by the Roman agriculturalist, who died 19 years before Christ. Let us next attend to the observations of Hesiod, who is thought to have been contemporary with Homer, and of course to have flourished 907 years before Christ; carrying us back to the times of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and Ahab king of Israel.

He advises the Greeks to begin the harvest at the

a Georg. i. 66--70. iii. 304.

Georg. i. 215-230.

• Georg. i. 204.

b Georg. i. 208-212.

d Georg. i. 138.

Eneid ix. 668.

f

rising of the Pleiades, and ploughing when they set; which constellation, after lying concealed 40 days and 40 nights, appears again when the sickle is sharpened." They cut their wood in autumn, when the dog-star appeared. The voice of the crane, on her annual return, was the signal for ploughing, and showed the time of rainy winter. The appearance of the cuckoo was rather late for sowing; but, if it rained moderately for three days, they had as good a crop as those who sowed earlier. When the winter had finished, sixty days after the equinox, Arcturus, leaving the ocean, first appeared in the evening, and was the signal for cutting their vines. And when the tortoise lifted its claws from the earth, as if flying the Pleiades, the vines were no more to be dug, but the hooks sharpened for the harvest. When the thistle was in flower, and the grasshopper chirped under the trees, the goats were accounted fattest, and the vines were best, for then Sirius ruled. When the force of Orion was first felt, they trod out their grain in a place exposed to the wind, and then laid it up in vessels. When Orion and Sirius came to the middle of the heavens, and Aurora, with her rosy fingers, beheld Arcturus, they plucked their grapes, laid them on the ground for ten days and nights, and then drew off the juice into vessels. After the Pleiades, Hyades, and strength of Orion was set, then was the season for ploughing. It appears from Homer, however, and Madame Dacier's note upon it, that the Grecians did not plough in the manner now in use; for they first broke up the ground with oxen, and then ploughed it more lightly with mules.

a Hesiod, ii. 1—5. d Hesiod, ii. 104. Hesiod, ii. 200. Hesiod, ii. 232.

k

b Hesiod, ii. 35.
Hesiod, ii. 184.
h Hesiod, ii. 215.
Iliad x. 351.

And, when they

Hesiod, ii. 66.

f Hesiod, ii. 189.

Hesiod, ii. 227.

employed two ploughs in a field, they measured the space they could plough in a day, and set their ploughs at the two sides of that space, when they proceeded to plough towards each other. This intermediate space was constantly fixed, but less in proportion for two ploughs of oxen than for two of mules: because oxen were slower, and employed more in a field that had not been yet turned up; whereas mules were naturally swifter, and made greater speed on ground that had already got the first furrow. Pope's note on the above is, that this manner of measuring a space of ground seems to have been customary in those times, from that passage in 1 Sam. xiv. 14, where "Jonathan and his armour-bearer slew twenty men, within as it were an half acre of land, which a yoke of oxen might plough." And I may add, that the same thing is alluded to in the Odyssey viii. 124, where Homer is describing the space of ground at the games given by Alcinous, king of Phæacia, in honour of Ulysses, in which Clytonius outstripped his rivals at the race as far as the hinds allow between the mule and ox from plough to plough." Such are the notices which these authors give us of ancient agriculture; but they are not such good interpreters of Scripture as the present usages of the East: we shall therefore quit them, to collect what can be got by comparing the accounts of Eastern travellers, beginning,

1st, With the times of ploughing and sowing.-It hath been observed, when treating of the weather of the Holy Land, that, when the former rains begin to fall, there are commonly two or three days of heavy rain, after which the weather clears up for twenty or thirty days; and that then the rains return, and continue at times during the winter. I may now notice, that the natives never think of ploughing their fields till these rains begin, for the ground is so parched with VOL. II.

3 K

the long continued drought of summer, that to sow be fore rain would be throwing away the seed. During the twenty or thirty days, therefore, above-mentioned, they are exceedingly busy in ploughing and sowing. Ploughing at Aleppo, which Mr. Harmer considers as contemporary with ploughing at Judea, begins about the end of September (although, in Ray's Collection of Travels, p. 319, we hear of travellers who saw the fields about Rama ploughed in the middle of September,) and they sow their earliest wheat about the middle of October; but as the frosts are never so severe as to prevent ploughing through the winter, they continue to sow all sorts of grain till the end of January, and barley sometimes after the middle of February, O. S. No harrows are used; but the ground, after being ploughed once, is sown, and then ploughed a second time. If the soil be sandy, they even sow without ploughing, and then plough down the seed, which certainly is in favour of the grain in such a latitude. It obtains moisture at the bottom of the furrow, which it would not always find at the top, and takes a firmer hold of the soil. Their plough is so light, that a man of moderate strength can carry it in his hand. A little cow, or at most two, and sometimes only an ass (as in Isaiah's time, ch. xxxii. 20,) is sufficient to draw it; and one man both holds the plough and drives the animal with so much ease, that he generally smokes his pipe at the same time." Whilst Hasselquist was at Bethlehem, 19th of April, 1751, he saw a plough with a singular but useful appendage. "While my companions," says he, "were saying their prayers at the place where the angel appeared to the shepherds, I had an opportunity of viewing a kind of plough, here used to turn up the

• Russell's Aleppo, vol. i. p. 73, &c.

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