The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1877-1885, 1879-12-04
Gables porttolto.
For the FARMER AND MECHANIC.
Physiological Teachings of the Bible.


pure air." as if the air itself were good or
bad. But it is only the extraneous matter
which mingles itself with the air which
renders it impure. These impurities some
times come from decaying vegetable matter
and sometimes from decaylng animal mat
ter ON the surface of the earth. But most
frequently they come from the soil itself.
Some are imperceptibie examinations. which we
can only detect b. their icath-dealing power
upon man and beast. We give this unseen
source Of disease a name, but we can do lit
tie to control 1t, or to remoy 1t. The name
is n,Glarj0. The district in the centre Of
which Rome sits upon her seven hills, was
once the richest and most popu!ous country
in the world. The ruins of immense num-
bers of towns and villages lie scattered over
its surface. No man now dares to sleep in
the Campagna di Roma.
Death reigns In the air; unseen, u%nfelt,
it seizes upon its prey. Whence comes it?
for the air was pure in the early history Of
Rome. Another hot-bed of death is the
delta Of the Gauges. The physicians of
Europe, who held q congress, to enquire in
to the nature and sources Of that terrible
scouree, the Asiatic cholera, found that
whenever and wherever it appeared, it
could be traced backward, on its track of
death, to the delta of the Ganges. India,
like the e%nvirons of Rome, has been cult
waited for long ages and the mud from
the widest expanse of titled soil in the world,
filled with impurities, accumulates in this
fiat, alluyial region at the mouths of the
Gauges. In China, there is probably a
greater amount of land in cultivation, but it
is in separate tracts, with trees interspersed.
Long continued tillage destroys what we
may term the breathing power" Of the
soil. In its natural condition, its usually
covered with a carpet of native grass, or
with the decayed leaves of successive years,
from the trees which o%vershadow it. In
this condition, it is open, porous as a sponge,
absorbing air and rain readily. Cultivation
gradually destroys this absorbent power;-
the soil become close and tenacious when
rain falls, 1t cannot permeate it, and hence
it floods the streams, until destructive fresh
cts sweep away mills, bridges and houses.
These freshets are rarely known in a tree
covered, or IN a grass-covered country.
Soil which has lost its bredthtag power is
always damp draining in many cases re-
stores its fertility. These damp, underated
soils, produce a disease in sheep which is
said to be similar to typhus fever in man
ard which shepherds call the rot. Whole
Hooks, when turned into certain fields, be-
come plague stricken in less than an hour.
Yellow fever never prevails except in
those regions where the soil as we'll as eli
Iidic, dItC.S tlC ali. otltSlic Vi l1CSc To-
~calities, the patients may be carried in the
worst stage of the disease, but they cannot
communicate it to others.
The sell then can become poisoned, and
hence the impure ar, the nttdsD,a, the ma
hnTto, which is SO f~earfully destructive to
animal life. This poisoning is produced by
the continuous tillage which destroysgits
breathing power, just as gangrene will de-
stroy the breathing power ofthe human skin.
"What, then p you ask must we dis
continue the tillage of soil and starve %
Starvation IS not a necessary result Of a dis
continuance of our present mode of tilling
the soil. In Deut. 20, 10, we are told that
the tree Of the field is mans life and
forbidden, under any circumstances, to de
stroy a food producing tree.
In Eden stood the trees (plural) OF life
and the tree Of knowledge Of good and evil.
Man was allowed to eat Of the former and
forbidden to eat Of the latter. He disobeyed.
and God did not forbid him to continue to
eat of the tree of life, but placed a flaming
sword which turned every way TO bar his
access to it. Two thousand years afterwards
he said to His chosen people, the Hebrews,
Thou shalt not destroy trees for meat for
the trees Of the field IS mans LJe.' Let di-
vines and Hebraists tell us the difference be-
tween the tree of life" in Genesis-and the
lItC vi IlldI > liz III bCuIClOI1OLly-
Again, the great feast of the Jews was the
feast of Tabernacles, which might also have
been called the feast of trees. "When We
have gathered in the fruit of the land, We
shall keep a feast unto the Lord seven days.
And We shall take you on the first day the
fruits (Heb.) of goodly trees, branches of
palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees
and willows of the brook and We shall re
joice before the Lord your God seven days"
In the glorious vision with which Ezekiel
closes his prophecy, he describes a garden
similar to the one planted by the Lord for
the first pair and in which ''shall grow
all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade,
neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed
it shall bring forth new fruit according to
his months, because their waters they issued
out Of the sanctuary; and the fruit thereof
shall be for meat, and the leaf for medicine"
St. John sets the closing seal upon the
apocalypse, by a similar description, ION
either side of the river were there the trees
of life lHehl which hare twelve mannor