“In several parts of the English Bible,” continued my uncle, “shall is put in the place of will. For instance, in Exodus ix. 4. ‘And the Lord shall sever between the cattle,’ where the sense evidently requires will; and thus, ch. vii. 4, and xi. 9, ‘Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you,’ should undoubtedly be rendered ‘Pharaoh will not hearken unto you.’ This agrees exactly with the principle I have already mentioned, that verbs active sometimes signify permission.”
My uncle mentioned several other instances of this confusion between shall, which seems to ordain, and will, which only foretels. And he added, “There are several of these minor faults and mistakes in our translation, which make it very important that we should never judge of detached passages, but that we should compare different parts of the Bible together, in order that they may throw light upon each other.”
21st.—I forgot to tell you in the right part of my journal, that in preparing my carnation beds, the gardener observed a great number of those wire-worms, which are so destructive to all the pink tribe. I recollected that Mr. Biggs said that salt destroyed them, but that it was difficult to apply just the right proportion; that is, enough to kill the worms, but not enough to render the ground sterile—which a great quantity of salt certainly does. In talking of this to my uncle, it occurred to him that the stuff called salt dross, which is often thrown away, would be a mild form of applying salt; and he was so kind and indulgent, that he procured, not without much trouble and difficulty, a boat-load; it is of an odd purplish brown colour, and retains many saline particles.
To each of my intended carnation beds, which are about six feet long and two feet broad, we put a wheelbarrow full of this stuff, which the gardener dug in, and thoroughly mixed with the earth. The beds were then thrown up in high ridges, to remain so for the winter, during which the salt will, my uncle thinks, destroy these mischievous worms, as well as the snail eggs.
If this succeeds, it will be a very satisfactory experiment, but many months must pass before we can ascertain its success.
This was done a few days before my uncle went to town.
22nd.—I have had another walk with my uncle to-day, in the beech-walk, of which he has made me so fond. I took that opportunity of asking him why some trees lose their leaves in winter, and others preserve them; for the fall of the leaf has been a subject of great curiosity to me, and I felt quite sure that he could explain the cause clearly. But he told me that it has never been satisfactorily accounted for, and that there is some objection to every opinion yet published. He says it would be a very good pursuit for my cousins and myself, to begin a course of observations on the nature of leaves and leaf-buds, and their connexion with the stem; and he has offered a prize, as he says they do in the learned societies, to whichever amongst us takes the best view of the subject.
I asked, was it not caused by frost? “It is not always the effect of autumnal frost,” he replied. “Some trees seem to lose their leaves at stated times, independently of the temperature. They fall from the lime, for instance, before any frost happens; and indeed all deciduous leaves, as the season advances, become gradually more rigid, less juicy, lose their down, and at last change their healthy green colour to a yellow or reddish hue.”
He then asked me if I had observed anything of the order in which the different trees cast them. I answered that the walnut and horse-chesnut appeared to have lost their leaves before any other: then the sycamore and lime, and I believed the ash had soon followed; but that many of the elm, and most of the beech and oak trees were still well covered, though they had changed colour.
“Yes,” said he, “but the leaves of the young beech, though they have become brown and dry, will not fall till spring; and the fibres of the oak are so tough, that the leaf does not easily separate from the branch. You may also perceive that the apple and peach trees remain green, very often till the beginning of December. Some botanists attribute the defoliation of trees to the drying up of the vessels which connect the leaf with the stem; and others to the swelling of the young buds for the succeeding year. This, they say, deprives the old leaf of its accustomed supply of sap, and as they enlarge, they push it out of their way; but there is a material objection to this theory, that the leafits of pinnated leaves fall in the same manner, though there are no buds to push them off.