This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 edition. Excerpt: ...being completed, the sower was beginning to sow. He had literally come forth to sow; for he came from the village of Irbid, several miles off, on the hills to the south. His basket of seed slung under his left arm, with steady measured pace he marched up and down his portion of the open field, jerking his handful of corn before him at each step. Two narrow paths intersected his corn-patch. These necessarily received their share of seed, where it did not long remain; for a few jackdaws and some little flocks of larks and buntings followed the sower, and speedily swept the pathways clean. The seed on the rich light soil was soon brushed in by a lad, with a bunch of twigs used as a rake. But much of this must come to nought. We spoke above of the rocks and stones with which the plain is strewn. Most of these boulders have sunk into the black earth, but only far enough to be covered with a sprinkling of soil by the harrow. At present all the surface is moist, and the seed will germinate, soon to be burned up by the scorching sun, like grass on the housetop. Every here and there we may see small stalks protruding. They are-the stumps of the most noxious weed of Gennesaret, a sort of astragalus (Astragalus c/zristianus), with its roots penetrating, as we found by experiment, several feet deep, and which the fellaheen are too indolent to dig up and extirpate, contenting themselves with chopping down the year's growth with their mattocks. Close alongside of these boulders and rock clumps are patches of the richest soil the earth produces, consisting of decomposed basalt from the stones which strew the surface. In good seasons, when there has been abundant "latter rain," a hundredfold is not an unusual crop in this fertile nook....