Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1877-02-13
Condition Of Soils.

| Il dImcIS are III CQo udOlC VI Say lug
"This land is in poor condition"-or
This Is good soil, but it Is rather run
down; 1t is in poor condition at pre-
sent" Or, looking over the fields Of q
neighbOr. who has taken little extra
pains, "This is poor land, but he has
got it up into good condition" "Con.
dition," then, IS artificial or accumulated
strength, thing we cannot depend
upon. except as we can depend upon the
continuance of the artifice or temporary
causes of which tits result. Condition
refers to those elements of fertility which
are capable of being turned to account in
the growth of crops within limited
time. We may have condition"
which is the result of natural causes, as
is illustrated by the manner in which
Indian-corn is grown in some parts of
South America, on land newly cleared
from the forest. You know that in tro-
pical latitudes, the year is usually divid-
ed into two seasons-the wet and the
dry. During the former, abundant rains
fall and vegetation grows with luHuri-
ance. The other half of the year is
comparatively dry, and plant-life is in
active. At the close of the rainy season,
the planters chop down the timber, the
brush, and everything that grows upon
the land where they propose to get a
crop. When the fallen vegetation Is
sufficiently dry, they set it on fire and
everything burns completely except the
largest trees. When the fire has gone
out toward the beginning of the next
of vegetation and coated with the ashes
of the forest. There, with the smallest
preparation, they plant their corn in the
ashes, dropping it in where they can,
and get magnificent crop. The second
year, they put on corn again and get
another large crop. The third year they
get another crop and after that. it is
cheaper to abandon that field, and to
clear another. The first piece grows up
to forest, and in six, or eight, or. ten
years, perhaps, they can burn it over
again. Here, the fertility of the soil
after burning is a condition" which is
produced partly by natural means. the
growth of the forest, which brings up
matters from below, and partly by arti-
fetal means, the telling and burning of
the forest, restoring the matters to the
surface.
Natural strength" is something which
is comparatively unaffected by cropping.
Where the soil has great natural strength,
you cannot permanently exhaust it;
yOu may SCt IL uoWu W d pOluI WAeIo
production is unremunerative, you may
say your land, once good, Is "exhausted, -
but a skillful farmer will take hold of it,
and by the use of some judiciously selec-
ted fertilizer, and the application of
well directed labor, he will bring up his
exhausted soil in a short time, and make
a profitable farm ofit. 1t only needs a
little condition" to re-establish its good
name. "COnditiOnn itself, however is
a thing which is easily run through
with. You may take poor, light soil,
and make it prOductiveb by theapplication
of manure and by careful tillage, but
If you stop there, and undertake to work
on that capital, you will find that it
deteriorates rapidly. You will have to
come down to natural strength, and if
that be small, your crops will cores
pond.
THE ETALMUD,-Jews, Protestants, and
Romanists all agree in receiving as
canonical the books of our Old Testa-
ment. But as the Romanists would add
to these the apocryphal books, so the
Jews insist on adding their oral law
They say that when the written law was |
given to Moses, inscribed on two tables |
of stone, God also gave another and
verbal law explanatory of the first,
which he was commanded not to COM
nit to writing, but to deliver down by |
oral tradition. When Moses came down |
from the mount they tell us that he first |
repeated this oral law to Aaron and his |
sons, and then to the seventy, and final
ly to all the people, each of whom was
obliged to repeat it in his hearing, to in
sure its carrect remembrance. Just be-
fore his death, they say, he spent a
month and six days in repeating it to
them again and they assert, he commit
ted it in special manner to Joshua,
through whom it was impaired to Phin-
cas-. and so on through the long line of
prophets, and afterwards of teachers,
down to the time of Judah the Holy,
who lived in the second century, by
whom it was committed to writing lest
it should be lost. This work, consisting
of six books, is the famous Mishna of the
Jews, which, with its Gemara, or COM
mentaries, constitutes their celebrated
Talmud, in which is comprehended all
their learning and much of their religion
as people. The whole work is held by
them in far higher esteem than the Bi-
BILE, SO much so that they say the Bible
is water, but the Talmud is wine; and
they even declare that he who studies
the Bible when he might read the Tai
mud does but waste his time, and that
to sin against the latter is far worse
than to sin against the former. So i'm
plicit is their confidence in this oral law
that it Is almost useless to reason with
Jew out of the Old Testament, for he is
ever ready with an answer from the Tai
mud, with the authority of which he is
fully satisfied -15yon Ed,garols, in Scrib-
n. fo,. EL1a.,rrs,.,f