leaves like so many emeralds. The wheat ears themselves were as
red as rubies, and each bore five sparkling grains as white as
snow, as sweet as honey, and as fragrant as musk. At first the
grains were as big as an ostrich's egg, but in the time of Enoch
they diminished to the size of a goose's egg, and in Elijah's to
that of a hen, while at the commencement of the common era, they
shrank so small as not to be larger than grapes, according to a
law the inverse of the order of nature. Rabbi Yehudah
(_Sanhedrin_, fol. 70, col. 1) says that wheat was the forbidden
fruit. Hence probably the degeneracy.

Of two that quarrel, the one that first gives in shows the nobler
nature.

Ibid., fol. 71, col. 2.

He who sets aside a portion of his wealth for the relief of the poor
will be delivered from the judgment of hell. Of this the parable of the
two sheep that attempted to ford a river is an illustration; one was
shorn of its wool and the other not; the former, therefore, managed to
get over, but the latter, being heavy-laden, sank.

_Gittin_, fol. 7, col. 1.

Zoreah and Eshtaol (Josh. xv. 33) were two large mountains, but Samson
tore them up and grated the one against the other.

_Soteh_, fol. 9, col. 2.

The above tradition is founded on Judges xiii. 25, in which it