650 



SOLA -SOLOMON. 



opposite extreme from sand. They are those in 

 winch clay or impalpable materials predominate. 

 The extreme fineness and close compacting of their 

 substance render them very retentive of water, which 

 sandy soil is almost incapable of retaining, and when 

 dry they break into cracks and rifts through, shrink- 

 age. Soils may be clayey in texture without lieing 

 composed of clay, since other substances than kaolin 

 and the other clay compounds may give them ad- 

 hesiveness and impermeability. 



Intermediate between clayey and Randy lie the 

 loamy soils, or soils composed of a mixture of sand 

 and clay, or of coarse and impalpable substances. 

 These are less tenacious than clay, more so than 

 sand, and exist in many degrees between sand and 

 clay, being known by the various titles of clay loam, 

 loam, sandy loam, light sand loam, etc. Tho physi- 

 cal condition of these noils is that best suited to or- 

 dinary agriculture. Calcareous or lime soils are 

 those that contain carbonate of lime in predominat- 

 ing qnantity. They are not uncommon in Europe, 

 but are rare in the United States, and scarcely < <- 

 cur at all in the Northern and Middle States. In 

 general, the lime is subordinate to sand or clay, 

 yielding calcareous sands, calcareous clays, or cal- 

 careous loams. Marls are composed of a mixture 

 of clayey material with finely divided carbonate of 

 lime. The green-sand of New Jersey is of this char- 

 acter. Of other soils may be named peat or swamp 

 muck, composed of liunins arising from the decay of 

 vegetable substance in bogs and marshes. "Where. 

 much organic matter has decayed out of water, as 

 leaves of trees, grasses, etc., it forms a soil of vege- 

 table mould. Ochrey or ferruginous soils are those 

 containing much iron oxide or silicate. They are 

 yellow, red, or brown in color. The portion of the 

 soil usually wrought is that near the surface, mid 

 which is directly exposed to sunlight, rain, and 

 atmospheric influences, and which contains humus 

 from decaying roots, etc. Beneath it lies the sub- 

 soil, unmodified by these agencies, yet often con- 

 taining much fertilizing material. This is fre- 

 quently brought to the surface in the deep plow- 

 ing of recent farming. Under this, in certain re- 

 gions, is a dense, almost impenetrable, crust known 

 M "hard pan." It is composed of clay or gravel 

 cemented by iron or other compacting material, and 

 may be considered as soil on its way hack to become 

 rock. Hard pan often forms the bottom of marshes 

 or peat-swamps, in a thin impermeable layer beneath 

 which may lie porous soils. (c. M.) 



SOLA, ABRAHAM DE (1825-1882), rabbi, was born 

 in London, Sept. 18, 1825. He was carefully trained 

 in Hebrew learning, and in 1847 accepted a call to a 

 Portuguese-Hebrew congregation in Montreal. Here 

 he became prominent as a pulpit orator and advocate 

 of orthodox Judaism. In 1853 he was made p>of, -s- 

 sor of Hebrew in McGill University, and afterward 

 lectured there on Spanish literature. He also taught 

 Hebrew in the Presbyterian College of Montreal, 

 and was president of the Natural History Society of 

 that city. He died while on a visit to Xe-. 

 City, June 5, 1882. He published n Ili*ti-ii <-f //< 

 Je,'r nf Pertia (1848) ; Scripture < 1848) ; 



Jmrih <'<il?.ii<tnr Syxtem (1854) ; Srinit'in/ Ymtitutiont 

 of tlie H-.breut (\9iaQ) ; Hit<il,h.,t:n Lri, ilie Ful* \l 

 ii'ih (1H69); H,lory of the Jew of Poland (1870); 

 Hittnry nf tli* Jeas of /Wince (1871). 



SOLOMON, and the Book of PKOVKRBS. The an- 

 thor of the article on SOLOMON in the 

 Kl i 265 ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA speaks of 

 AnTllep!). " tne n>any floating and fragmentary 

 notes of various dates that have found 

 a place in the account of his reign in the Books of 

 Kings." Dr. A. B. Davidson in the article on PROV- 

 KRBS, in the same work, says of the times of Solo- 

 moo, that " life in the civil sense began in this age. 



I . . . Then the tribes were consolidated into on 

 I community, the state rose into exi One who 



holds that there was properly no Israelitish nation, 

 ami mi united Israel, until the time of Solomon, and 

 that the institutions described in the Pentateuch 

 mostly originated during the successive centuries 

 that followed Solomon, must necessarily hold that 

 tho history of Solomon, as given in the Bible, is 

 disjointed and largely inconsistent with fact. But 

 if we accept the statements of the Bible to the effect 

 that Israel had been a people from tho times of 

 Abraham, and a nation from the times of Moses ; that 



I Solomon received from his ancestors the law that 



| Moses wrote, the ark and tabernacle that M 

 made, and the institutions that Moses founded ; 

 that the building of tho temple was a fulfilment 

 up to that date, the most notable fulfilment of 

 tho ancient promise to give Israel rest ; that the 

 religious ordinances and seasons of the Pentateuch, 

 including the three great annual festivals, were ob- 

 served in connection with tho temple, in Solomon's 

 time, then " the account of his reign in the Books of 

 Kings" is consistent and intelligible. It presents 

 itself as having been compiled from different sources, 

 and as a record of only a part of the events of tLo 

 times, but it i.s a coherent record. 



On the whole, the accounts in Kings and Chroni- 

 cles attribute to Solomon neither the highest typo 

 of moral and spiritual character nor the highest 

 typo of statesmanship. It is not likely, however, 

 that his reputation as a builder, a man of culture, 

 successful in commerce, and living magnificently, 

 will ever greatly dwindle-. 

 In the article PALMYRA, in the ENCYCLOPEDIA 



j BRITANNICA, Prof. W. Robertson Smith adduces eon- 

 rations to show that the traditional reading of 

 1 Ki. ix. 1H is incorrect, that this passage does not 

 mention Tadmor in the wilderness, and that the 

 author of 2 Chron. viii. 4 is therefore mistaken 1.1 

 his reading of tho passage in Kings. If these wero 



(conclusive' they would go to show- that Solomon's 

 overland commerce was L'ss extensive than has com- 

 monly been supposed. But they are not conclusive ; 

 they prove at most that tho alleged understand. m; 

 of the matter might bo possible, if there were evi- 

 dence in support of it, but they do not furnish tho 

 required evidence. For Solomon's purposes, tho 

 commercial route through 1'almyrii would not be a 

 rival to that by the Red Sea, provided he controlled 

 both routes, as the Biblical narratives certainly rep- 

 resent that he did. Tho opinion that Solomon 

 founded Palmyra is more tenable than the conject- 

 ure that, certain unknown Arabs founded it at some 

 unknown Inter time. 

 I'm- tho times of Solomon in their relations to the 



f the history, Bee Isu.u i.. 



The Biblical accounts represent that there was a 

 revival of literary culture in Israel in tlw> reign of 

 J)avid, and that Solomon was especially distinguished 

 in certain departments of science and letters. It is 

 in accord with this that the Book of Canticles and 

 most of Proverbs have been commonly attributed to 

 him. In proof that Canticles is not- an " unfriendly 

 picture of Solomon," drawn by some northern 

 Israelite, but is probably a genuine work of Solomon 

 himself, sec C\vn< i ,1 s in this work. As to the Book 

 of Proverbs, no one disputes that it contains some 

 genuine sayings of Solomon. From the ti;i 

 the beginning of the book, and in x. 1 and xxv. 1, it 

 is most natural to understand that the sayings i.. re 

 found are prevailingly (|>erhaps not exclusively) Solo- 

 monic ; that chaps, i.-xxiv. are an earlier collection, 

 including previous smaller collections ; and that 



| chaps, xxv.-xxix. are a supplementary collection of 

 Solomonic proverbs, made in the days of Hezekiah. 

 In extreme opposition to this, certain scholars hold 

 the proverb-collections to be among the latest of the 



