animals' flanks if they should balk. And probably there were many
useful tricks to be learned; for example, words like our "Gee" and
"Haw" and "Whoa," to shout at the animals when it was necessary to
turn to the left or the right or to stop altogether.

Plowing was one of the most difficult of the tasks to be done with
oxen. The furrows had to be run straight and true. And the plows were
clumsy affairs--not like our shining steel plows to-day--just a long
pole with a short diagonal crosspiece, sharpened at the lower end, or
tipped with a small bronze share.


CROPS OF ANCIENT CANAAN

The Hebrews raised the same crops as the earlier Canaanites. The
leading ones were wheat, barley, olives, grapes, and figs. The two
grain crops were, of course, the most necessary to life. They were
planted in the early spring, and harvested in the summer. The grain
was sown broadcast, by hand, just as Jesus describes in his great
parable of the sower.

=Ancient agriculture.=--Harvesting and threshing were done almost
entirely by hand. The grain was cut with sickles. Some of the old
sickles have recently been found by investigators, buried deep in the
mounds where ruined Canaanite cities lie hidden. Some of these sickles
are of metal, and others are made of the jawbones of oxen or asses,
with sharp flints driven into the tooth sockets. After the grain was
cut it was tied in bundles and carried to the threshing floor, which
was usually a wide, level space of hard ground or rock. Oxen were
driven back and forth across the grain on the floor, drawing a heavy