in the canals of the Nile; vide on Job viii. 11. that is to say, a marsh plant; and if we take achim here to signify "marsh animals," we shall be, I conclude, not far from its meaning. Therefore, as we have taken tsiim generally, we must also take this word generally, to render it a counterpart to that; as, on the other hand, if we wish to make this word specific of any particular animal, it will oblige us to do the same with the other. Our public translation is favoured by the LXX, BoLxx, chart, and others, who think the yellings of the wild animals are referred to; but, I think, the principle of parallelism forbids our acquiescence in that interpretation.

3dly, Owls, "daughters of screams," OSTRICHES. Vide on Unclean Land Birds, Levit. xi. and FRAGMENT, No. 144.

4thly, Satyrs, shoarim; literally, "hairy ones." This word, or at least its kindred, certainly signifies goats, which are hairy animals; but here it cannot express any domesticated creatures. If it be taken generally, then shaggy, rough, hairy, wild beasts, is its meaning; but if it be taken for a certain kind of animal, then I think it possible some of the monkey, or baboon kinds may be intended, especially as they are said to dance there, to frisk, to sport, to play their gambols, perhaps, literally, irked, to jerk themselves forward with violence. "Hairy baboons shall gambol there." I do not know exactly what kinds of baboons inhabit the adjacent countries, and we cannot implicitly trust to the information of those who show wild beasts among us, but some which I have seen under the name of the "Persian savage," were surely hairy enough; not to allude to others, as the simia sphinx, &c. of Linnæus.

5thly, Wild beasts of the islands, AIIM. This seems to be ill rendered islands; it should rather mean habitations, or places, or things, settled around a certain spot. In this place, perhaps, wild In this place, perhaps, wild vermin of cultivated countries, as foxes, weasels, hedgehogs, &c. generally taken, including whatever is offensive or destructive to man or to his labours.

But there is another sense in which the word island is used in the East, which is not inconsistent with this notion. The oases of the desert of Lybia, or Egypt, are islands of habitable land amid deserts of arid waste. This is the description of them by the Arabs; so that we see how the idea of islands, i.c. separations, insulated dwelling places may be connected with that of wild beasts; as to islands, i.e. totally surrounded by water, which is our English acceptation of the word, it is, I presume, foreign from the import of this passage.

6thly, Dragons, tanim, vide plate Lam. iv. I shall only observe, that tanim being always placed on desert shores, the opposition of the former word, in reference to domestic wild beasts, is maintained by referring this word to desert, sea side, rocky shore animals. Such, also, is the fact: Babylon being

seated on a river, land animals might have access to it; yet marsh or water animals were not excluded, because they might either come from the sea, or they might be such as love fresh water lakes or inundations for their residences. Had Babylon been on the sea, as Tyre, or in a sandy desert, as Palmyra, or on a rocky mountain, as Jerusalem, the mixture or consociation of animals so contrary in their natures would have been altogether unnatural.

The whole passage may be understood thus :

There shall the wild beasts of the dry desert lodge;

The savage animals of the, watry, marshes shall fully occupy their houses;

The daughters of screams, ostriches, shall reside there;
And there shall the hairy, baboons, gambol;

The vermin of the plain shall howl in their now deserted edifices;
As the sea shore amphibia shall roar in their once voluptuous pal-

aces.

The reader will judge whether these oppositions yet associations, are likely to be adopted by a poet so correct as the prophet Isaiah.

CHAPTER XIV. VERSE 13.

I will make it [Babylon] a possession for the BITTERN; and pools of water. Instead of the bittern, or ardea ibis, probability, supported by the majority of authorities, leads us to read, the porcupine, or Vide hedgehog. Vide the plate on this passage. also chap. xxxiv. 11.

VERSE 29.

Out of the root of the serpent, nachash, shall come forth a cockatrice, tjepho; and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent, sheraph meoneph.

The reader is referred for what we have said on the nachash, or serpent, taken generally, to the dragon of Rev. xii. for the tjephon, or cockatrice, to Isai. xi. plates. We have added some remarks on the possibility of the existence of winged serpents of a poisonous nature; and have referred to winged lizards not injurious. We shall now endeavour to suggest a hint or two on this seraph.

1st, It is associated with the tjepho, or naja, which is of the most venomous kind; this serpent therefor is venomous, yet, perhaps, not immediately fatal for we find that the poison of the naja requires som time to spread its effects over the person, and to ex tinguish life; moreover, remedies, taken in time, ar salutary.

2dly, The seraph must be a serpent which inhabi Arabia or Egypt, or both: Arabia, if that be th country meant by the appellation South, chap. xx 6. or Egypt, if that be rather the country intende Moreover, we find these seraphs tormented Israe when in the wilderness of Arabia, Numb. xxi. 6, & And in that passage we have a history of the effec

of their venom, which, like that of the naja, seems not to have produced instantaneous death, but to have allowed some time. According to the testimony of travellers, the cerastes is the most numerous in those districts; and, indeed, Mr. Bruce allows no other nevertheless he himself plainly describes another, differing from the cerastes, in having no horn on his head. He describes this serpent as found among the balsam-trees; and, I think, if we add "darting from tree to tree," as we find described by Niebuhr, see the extract from him, Dragon, plate, we come pretty near to the idea of these poisonous flying serpents, for which we need not quit the country between Judea and Egypt.

All circumstances determine against Scheuzer, that this serpent resides in the desert, not in stagnant or other waters; and, I rather think, on the whole, that the colour of this serpent has given name to it, because, to speak of it as occasioning thirst, and burning, by its bite, is to express no more than appertains to many of its tribe, not to one in particular. I venture, therefore, to consider it as having fiery, red, or yellow, for its principal hue, perhaps not without a mixture of brown; which colour is a convenient parallel to the golden naja. The word seraph certainly signifies burning; yet, in the Chaldee, or rather Talmudical Hebrew, kindred words signify to distil; also gum, resin, juice in general, which is, liquor dropping, distilling from the tree. Seerephah denotes the catamenia; and seriph denotes liquid food. If this ever had been one meaning of the word seraph, in ancient Hebrew, it would decide the question; and would describe a poisonous liquid juice emitted by serpents, which might have the property of occasioning violent burnings, but which might also mean venom, generally taken. I would willingly take this seraph for a serpent which ejects its venom, but I cannot find authorities for the existence of such a serpent in Egypt, or Arabia, at present, whatever might have existed there anciently.

As to the flying of these serpents, I must again refer as before; but would add, that I see no decisive necessity for supposing the use of this word to denote flying with wings, in all cases: it often signifies vibration, swinging backward and forward, a tremulous motion, a fluttering; and this is precisely what Niebuhr describes, as produced by the serpents heie thiâre, in the branches of the tree from which they dangle, in order to spring to another. In short, if we connect with this account of Niebuhr, of the leaping of serpents from the date-trees, the venomous properties of those found by Mr. Bruce, among the balsam-trees, which he describes as hornless cerastes, I presume, we are not far from the flying seraphs of Scripture. Date-trees, we know, are extant in the desert where Israel dwelt; and there, too, dwells the cerastes: and though it be a contradiction in terms to speak of a hornless cerastes, yet it leads us to a

conception not inadequate, as I suppose, of the serpent described by Moses, and threatened by the prophet Isaiah.

I do not know whether it is worth while to refer to what Herodotus says respecting the flying serpents; but his account of their size, as not being large; of their fondness for sweet smells; that they frequent trees which bear spices, and places where the calamus aromaticus grows, agrees perfectly with Mr. Bruce's finding them among the balsam-trees, and, I think, corroborates the hints we have suggested. Vide Herodotus, lib. iii. cap. 107, &c.

CHAPTER XXVII. VERSE 1.

In that day the Lord with his sore and great sword shall punish LEVIATHAN, the piercing serpent, even LEVIATHAN, the crooked serpent, and shall slay the DRAGON that is in the sea.

This is a difficult passage: our translation supposes, that only two creatures are mentioned, leviathan and the dragon. Others suppose, that three are intended: 1st, the piercing serpent; 2d, the crooked serpent; 3d, the dragon.

We must, on this latter, observe, that the dragon is the tannin, an amphibious animal, of which we find a whole class, Lam. iv. plate; but it is here very emphatically mentioned, "THE VERY THE tannin.” One would wish, therefore, to refer it to the largest of the kind.

The second animal is, the crooked nachash; rather the tortuous, winding, folding, writhing, twining, serpent; not a serpent naturally crooked, but one whose manners and progresses are from side to side, gliding in, as it were, meanders, bending all ways to effect its course. I incline to seek this serpent, either among those water snakes which are referred to on Rev. xii. plate, respecting which we desire information, but have thought they might grow at least to the size of land serpents; or else, to those land serpents of enor mous magnitude, which take the water with great readiness, and swim to considerable distances out at If we had satisfactory accounts of the true hydras, I should probably prefer them; but, as the tannin are amphibious, we are not bound to seek other than amphibia for this second creature.

sea.

The first animal mentioned in this passage I incline to think is the crocodile itself, whose stiff defences do not permit his ready turning, but oblige him to take a circuit for that purpose. I would, therefore, consider the word leviathan as signifying the jointed, riveted, elongated reptile, the crocodile; whose rigidity makes him go as straight as possible; contrasted with a. bending reptile, scaly also, indeed of very hard scales, strongly jointed, riveted, as it were, and of great length; and further contrasted by a sea animal, capable of diving and holding out on the mighty waters a longer course, perhaps than either of them yet not wholly a sea resident, but am

phibious. The passage implies so much, as usually understood. N.B. The word earth in our translation does not always mean the whole globe, but should be, often, rendered land, or region; and the word sea should, often, be waters; it is sometimes taken for the Nile. If it be so taken here, then the crocodile is undoubtedly meant by the first leviathan; and we must find the following creatures among its neighbours. I do not recollect any serpent expressly of Egypt, which answers to this requisition; but we know, that adjoining to Egypt, in Lybia, and Africa at large, is the very residence of immense serpents; witness that of Regulus, to which we again refer. As to the tannim, we know that phoca, or seals, are found in the Mediterranean, on one side of Egypt, and in the Red Sea, on the other side; and these, latter, may be the kind referred to.

But I would not omit to mention the sentiment of Scheuzer, that the first leviathan, the straight, should be rendered bar; for so the word implies, a bar for a door, for instance; as if this creature had a bar across it, rather than along it. He prefers the sygena, or hammer-headed shark; taking the projecting sides of the head for the bar intended; and, in favour of this, we ought to add, that Mr. Bruce mentions a large fish of this kind, [twelve feet long] struck from his vessel in the Red Sea, Travels, vol. i. but against this may be objected a doubt, whether the word leviathan ever means a true fish, a creature which resides wholly in the waters: it seems rather to mean an amphibious reptile, and nachash, as we have seen, may be taken in the same sense, which is perfectly agreeable to the scope of this passage. The Jews, however, are not satisfied with the productions of nature; but on this subject have recourse to a fish, in length 500 stadia; and in Bava Bathra, they mention a ship which spent three days on the back of this fish, in sailing from one fin to another. This is no subject, not even metaphorically taken, to amuse, much less to edify, a maritime nation.

CHAPTER XXVIII. VERSE 25.

When the ploughman hath made plain the face of his ground, doth he not cast abroad, 1st, the fitches, scatter, 2d, the cummin, and cast in, 3d, the principal wheat, and, 4th, the appointed barley, and, 5th, rye in their place?

1st, Fitches, or vetches, a kind of tare. This word occurs but this once in Scripture, so that we have only the assistance of versions, not of any parallel places. Jerom renders it by gith, of which Pliny speaks, lib. xx. cap. 17. "Some among the Greeks name the gith melanthion, others melaspermon, [black seed.] The best is of the strongest smell and blackest colour."

Ausonius says, it is "pungent as pepper." Pliny adds, "its seed is very good for seasoning food:" and,

lib. xix. cap. 8. "it seems to be grown purposely for the bakehouse;" that is to say, to be sprinkled on bread, as we do caraway seeds, &c. on biscuits. Commentators are mostly in favour of this plant, the gith: but what is this gith? Mr. Parkhurst thinks it is the fennel; and he quotes Ballester, as saying, Hier. lib. iii. cap. 5. "Gith is commonly met with in gardens; it grows a cubit in height, sometimes more. The leaves are small, like those of fennel, the flower blue, which disappearing, the ovary shews itself on the top, like those of a poppy, furnished with little horns, oblong, divided by membranes into several partitions and cells, in which are enclosed seeds of a very black colour, not unlike those of a leek, but very fragrant."

I doubt, however, whether the writer who compares the leaves of this plant to those of fennel is not decisive against Mr. Parkhurst's notion; for then, why not say at once it is the fennel? Yet, that it classes with the fennel may be admitted.. Is it the dill? is it the anise? or, is it the caraway? the latter has in favour of it our custom of strewing it on cakes; and perhaps the anise has in favour of it its being associated with the cummin in Matth. xxiii. 23. This is so much the stronger, if the present passage be understood of a similarity, not of a contrast.

2dly, Cummin, signifies, without contradiction, the plant known by us under that name; and which is in general use throughout Europe. The long-seeded cummin, Matth. xxiii. 23.

3dly, Wheat, vide on Exod. ix. 32. The prophet adds, says our translation, the principal wheat: regulated wheat, measured wheat, say most interpreters. I rather think protected wheat; wheat so much valued, as to be very carefully attended to. The root of the word seems to me to imply protection, and so a chief, i.e. a protector; but not so much perhaps a protector, in the instance of wheat, as an article under especial protection, by reason of its importance. Can it mean lordly wheat? a dignitary among vegetables.

4thly, Barley, vide on Exod. ix. 32. This barley also has an epithet applied to it: the appointed barley: I confess I know no natural appointment of barley, more than of other grain. I have been told by one of our best antiquaries that barley was certainly the first corn cultivated for human food; and it appears on many of the medals of Sicily, unless that plant so represented be a bearded wheat. If the sense of barley designed for food be not accepted here, I know no better, than to take this epithet as a reference to the beard of barley; a kindred word appears to mean in Talmudical Hebrew, a sharp leafed herb. Can this appointed barley be a kind of lieutenant to principal wheat?

5thly, Rye, cusmet, vide on Exod. ix. 32.

As to the manners of threshing out corn, and wherein they differ, vide FRAGMENT, No. 28.

CHAPTER XXIX. VERSE 8.

It shall be as when a hungry man dreameth, and behold he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is emp: ty; or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and behold he drinketh; but he awaketh, and behold he is faint, and his soul hath appetite.

The poetry of this simile is obvious to every reader of sensibility; but we have had repeated occasion to observe that we, in this country, cannot enter into the feelings of those who reside where water is scarce. As the simile of the prophet is drawn from nature, the reader will not be displeased with an extract which describes the actual occurrence of such a circumstance.

"The scarcity of water was greater here at Bubaker, than at Benown. Day and night the wells were crowded with cattle, lowing, and fighting with each other, to come at the trough: excessive thirst made many of them furious; others, being too weak to contend for the water, endeavoured to quench their thirst, by devouring the black mud from the gutters near the wells; which they did with great avidity, though it was commonly fatal to them.

"This great scarcity of water was felt by all the people of the camp; and by none more than myself. "I begged water from the negro slaves that attend ed the camp, but with very indifferent success; for though I let no opportunity slip, and was very urgent in my solicitations, both to the Moors and to the negroes, I was but ill supplied, and frequently passed the night in the situation of Tantalus. No sooner had I shut my eyes, than fancy would convey me to the streams and rivers of my native land; there, as I wandered along the verdant brink, I surveyed the clear stream with transport, and hastened to swallow the delightful draught; but, alas! DISAPPOINTMENT AWAKENED ME, and I found myself a lonely captive, perishing of thirst amidst the wilds of Africa!

"One night, though the trough was none of the largest, and three cows were already drinking in it, I resolved to come in for my share; and kneeling down, thrust my head between two of the cows, and drank," Mungo Park's Travels in Africa, p. 145.

CHAPTER XXX. VERSE 6.

The young lion, labia, vide on Gen. xlix. The old lion, laish, vide ib. The viper, aphoch, vide Job xx. 14. The fiery flying serpent, vide on chap. xiv.

29.

VERSE 20.

Blessed are ye who sow beside all waters; who send forth thither the feet of the ox and the ass.

It seems wonderful that rice, which is now so indispensable a grain in Asia, Egypt, &c. should not be

"In the afternoon, at the entrance of a more mounstubble. The process of that tillage is as follows: In tainous country, we came to the rice grounds, now in beans, that come into blossom about March, when they winter they plough out a piece of land, and sow it with the ground, about four inches deep. It next underplough them in for manure; water is then let in upon goes a third ploughing, after which the rice is sown. In fifteen days it comes up about five inches out of the earth, and is pulled up, tied in bundles about a foot diameter, and carried to another well prepared field, covered with water to the depth of four inches. Here each planter sets the plants of his bundle in the mud, in rows of about a foot distance one from another. fold, and grow so close that the ears may touch. Every stem ought to produce from ten to twenty-four water mill, where the lower grinding stone is covered When ripe, it is gathered in sheaves, and put into a with cork, by which means the chaff is separated from the grain, without bruising. The rice of Valencia is yellower than that of the Levant, but much wholesomer, and will keep longer without growing musty."

CHAPTER XXXIII. VERSE 4.

Your spoil shall be as the gathering of the CATERPILLAR; as the running to and fro of LOCUSTS, shall he run upon them.

Caterpillar, chasil. This is not the locust, being distinguished from it, Joel i. 4. Michaelis inclines to the chafer. Vide Joel, and Locust, plate.

CHAPTER XXXIV. VERSES 11, &c.

The, 1. CORMORANT and, 2. the BITTERN shall possess it; s. the owL and, 4. the RAVEN shall dwell in it; 5. THORNS shall come up in her palaces; 6. NETTLES and, 7. BRAMBLES in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation for, 8. DRAGONS, and a court for, 9. OWLS. The, 10. WILD BEASTS of the desert shall also meet with the, 11. WILD BEASTS of the island; the, 12. SATYR shall cry to his fellow, 13. the SCREECH OWL shall rest there; there shall, 14. the GREAT OWL make her nest; and, 15. the VULTURES be gathered.

1st, Cormorant. Kaat, the pelican. Vide Unclean Water Birds, Levit. xi.

2dly, The bittern. It must be owned the company in which this second creature, the kephud, is placed, leads strongly to the notion of its being a bird: bat see the plate of the Porcupine, on Isai. xiv.

This

3dly, The owl. Jansuph, the ardea ibis. we have rather supposed might be the bittern. Vide on Levit. xi. It is remarkable that the Arabian version reads al houbara. According to Dr. Shaw, the houbara" is of the bigness of a capon, but of a longer habit of body. It feeds on little shrubs and insects, like the graab el Sahara, frequenting in like manner the confines of the desert." Golius interprets it the bustard, which answereth indeed in colour, habit of body, and number of toes, but is twice as big. It is It is clear that these birds differ only as large and small. Dr. Russell says the Arabian name of the bustard is houbry.

The cormorant, No. 1, and the bittern, No. 2, if a bird, are water birds; this No. and the next are land birds; but wild, not domesticated.

4thly, The raven, oreb, vide on Levit. xi. 5thly, Thorns, sirim, vide on Psalm lviii. 6thly, Nettles, kemush; Vulgate, urtica. We have dismissed the nettles from Job xxx. 7. by substituting taller vegetables; but in the present instance we have no need to adopt that principle. We therefore admit them here, as we perceive no impropriety resulting from their admission.

7thly, Brambles, cuach, vide on 2 Kings, xix. 9. 8thly, Dragons, tannim, vide on Lam. iv. plate. 9thly, Owls, daughters of screams, ostriches, vide Levit. xi.

10thly, Wild beasts of the desert, tjiim, vide on chap. xiii. 22.

11thly, Wild beasts of the islands, aiim, vide chap. xiii. 22.

12thly, Satyr. Vide ib.

13thly, The screech owl, lilith. This word is a source of much confusion among interpreters. The root certainly signifies night, and a night creature we must, in all probability, seek to answer it; but is it a beast or a bird? the prophet has mentioned several birds, in the first place; then he has mentioned several beasts; does he here return again to birds? If we had already accepted two owls, making this a third, as our translators have done, much might be said against thinking it to be an owl here; but, as no other word used seems to denote an owl, this bids fairest to be its import. Nevertheless, we have taken, on Levit. xi. 16. a very different word to signify an owl, perhaps even the screech owl; and it must be owned that an owl would be better placed before, among ravens, than here, after satyrs.

14thly, The great owl, kippuz. This word also occurs only in this place, so that we have no assistance, except very little from the versions. Owl, it certainly is not. Some have taken it for kippud, the porcupine, but the difference between the words kippud and kippus is apparently too great to permit this : not to insist that we had kippud in verse 11. Bochart, dissatisfied with all opinions, seeks this creature in the serpent tribe, thinking it to be the acontias, or dart serpent. A word nearly resembling

this, kipphaga, in Arabic, signifies to leap: and such is the action of this serpent. The prophet's hints respecting making a nest, and laying and hatching eggs, are nevertheless, I think, a negative to this notion: for though some serpents are oviparous, and may be thought to make nests to receive their eggs, which yet requires proof, I know no serpent that hatches them, warms them by incubation, and forwards them by parental attention. These actions are certainly those of a bird.

This creature, then, the kippus, will not assist us to determine the foregoing, which, apparently, is allied to it in nature. It might be doubted whether the lilith, following the beasts, might not itself be a beast in which case, perhaps, the black wolf, or other nightly prowling beast, might have been intended. But if lilith introduce a distinct class of birds, then it must, most probably, be a night bird, and those which follow it night birds too. So far as appears, different kinds of owls might be called by the names lilith and kippus; and the following creature, 15thly, daiuth, which we have, vide Levit. xi. thought to be a bird, may be a night bird, hawk, also. If, then, these latter creatures may be so far of the same kind as to be all of them night birds, we cannot wonder that travellers give no information about them. Perhaps lilith and kippus may be so named from their cries; their voices being imitated in their names.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. VERSE 14.

As a CRANE or a swALLOW, did I chatter. The crane, sus. Bochart inclines to consider this word as denoting the swallow, and the second word as denoting the crane. He has on his side the LXX, Symmachus, and Vulgate but against him many more versions and commentators, who, with our own, read crane. The root signifies swift, and we call one of the swallow tribe by this name. Probably, it should be read rather sis than sus, for which we have some MSS. But, have we not another word for the swallow? Jonathan seems to hint at a bird resembling the crane, yet not the crane itself; a water bird, with a long neck. The Arabic inclines to the swallow.

2dly, Swallow, ogur. be the crane.

Bochart thinks this should

I suppose the crane, like the stork, has a facility of moving its bill, so as to rattle and chatter. Travellers in Asia have noticed this as a frequent action of this bird; and that when one has begun, the clattering of bills is repeated by all within hearing. The action of the bird, then, coincides with the meaning of the writer, and it may be that we should rather look for birds more alike in nature than the crane and swallow. Perhaps we should not go out of the crane tribe to seek them, especially as this tribe furnishes many besides the stork, which resemble the crane in figure and in general manners.