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XVI.

Rabbi Cheyah bar Abba says, "I once visited a householder at Ludkia, and they placed before him a golden table so loaded with silver plate, basins, cups, bottles and glasses, besides all sorts of dishes, delicacies, and spices,

{p. 139}

that it took sixteen men to carry it. When they set the table in its place they said (Ps. xxiv. i), 'The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof,' and upon removing it, they said (Ps. cxv. 16), 'The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord's, but the earth hath He given to the children of men.' I said, 'Son, how hast thou come to deserve all this?' 'I was,' replied he, 'a butcher by trade, and I always set apart for the Sabbath the best of the cattle.' 'How happy art thou,' I remarked (adds Rabbi Cheyah), 'to have merited such a reward, and blessed be God who has thus rewarded thee.'"

Shabbath, fol. 119, col. 1.

Rash Lakish said, "I have seen the flow of milk and honey at Tzipori; it was sixteen miles by sixteen miles,"

Meggillah, fol. 6, col. 1.

Rashi explains the above as follows:--The goats fed upon figs from which honey distilled, and this mingled with the milk which dropped from the goats as they walked along. On the spot arose a lake which covered an area of sixteen miles square. (See also Kethuboth, fol. 111, col. 2.)

A cedar tree once fell down in our place, the trunk of which was so wide that sixteen wagons were drawn abreast upon it.

Bechoroth, fol. 57, col. 2.

Who can estimate the loss the world sustains in its ignorance of the trees of the Talmud? What a sapling in comparison with this giant cedar of Lebanon must the far-famed Mammoth tree have been which was lately cut down in California, and was the largest known to the present generation!


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