difference of opinion exists among critics regarding the identification of the unicorn with any known animal. An examination of the passages in which allusion is made to the animal, will best enable us to judge whether the rhinoceros can make good its claim. The first passage in Scripture in which we findit mentioned is in the reluctant reply of Balaam to Balak, when importuned by the terrified king to curse the invading armies of Israel. "God brought them out of Egypt; he hath, as it, were the strength of a unicorn" [Hebrew, Reem] (Numb. xxiii. 22; xxiv. 8). In the Book of Psalms it is described as a horned animal. "But my horn shalt thou exalt as the horn of a unicorn" (Ps. xcii. 10). Moses, in his benediction of Joseph, distinctly states that it is an animal having more than one horn. His horns are like the horns of unicorns" (Deut. xxxiii. 17). In the Book of Job it is introduced as a very fierce and untameable animal. "Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou trust him because his strength is great? or

wilt thou leave thy labour to him? Wilt thou believe him that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn?" (Job. xxxix. 9-12).

The following remarks of Mr. Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller, seem to include nearly all that can be said on this subject. In continuation of some observations on another subject, he says,

66

My only business is with the reem, which I suppose to be the rhinoceros. The derivation of this word, both in the Hebrew and Ethiopic, seems to be from erectness or standing straight. This is certainly for no particular quality in the animal itself, who is not more nor even so much erect as many other quadrupeds, for its knees are rather crooked; but it is from the circumstance and manner in which his horn is placed. The horns of all other animals are inclined to some degree of parallelism with the nose, or os frontis. The horn of the rhinoceros alone is erect and perpendicular to this bone, on which it stands at right angles; thereby possessing a greater purchase or power as a lever than any bone could possibly have in any other position."

"The situation of the horn is very happily alluded

6

to in the sacred writings: My horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of a reem' (Ps. xcii. 10). And the horn here alluded to is not wholly figurative, but was really an ornament worn by great men in the days of victory, preferment, or rejoicing, when they were anointed with new, sweet, or fresh oil; a circumstance which David joins with that of erecting the horn.

"Some authors, for what reason I know not, have made the reem, or unicorn, to be of the deer or antelope kind, that is of a genus whose very character is fear and weakness, very opposite to the qualities by which the reem is described in Scripture; besides it is plain the reem is not of the class of clean quadrupeds; and a late modern traveller very whimsically takes him for the leviathan, which certainly was a fish. It is impossible to determine which is the silliest opinion of the two. Balaam, a priest of Midian, and so in the neighbourhood of the haunts of the rhinoceros, and intimately connected with Ethiopia, for they themselves were shepherds of that country, in a transport from contemplating the strength of Israel, whom he was brought to curse, says, they had as it

were the strength of a reem' (Numb. xxiii. 22). Job makes frequent allusion to its great strength, ferocity, and indocility. He asks, Will the reem be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?' (xxxix. 10.) That is, will he willingly come into thy stable and eat at thy manger?

6

And again, Canst thou bind the reem with a band in the furrow, and will he harrow the valleys after thee?' In other words, canst thou make him to go in the plough or harrow?

66

Isaiah, who of all the prophets seems to have known Egypt and Ethiopia best, when prophesying about the destruction of Idumea, says, that the reem shall come down with the fat cattle;' a proof that he knew his habitation was in the neighbourhood. In the same manner as when foretelling the desolation of Egypt, he mentions as one manner of effecting it, the bringing down the fly from Ethiopia, to meet the cattle in the desert, and among the bushes, and destroy them there, where that insect did not ordinarily come but on command, and where the cattle fled every year to save themselves from that insect.

"The principal reason for translating the word

reem, unicorn, and not rhinoceros, is from a prejudice that he must have but one horn. But this

is by no means so well founded as to be admitted as the only argument for establishing the existence of an animal which never has appeared after the search of so many ages. Scripture speaks of the horns of the unicorn (Deut. xxxiii. 17), so that even from this circumstance, the reem may be the rhinoceros, as the Asiatic and part of the African rhinoceros may be the unicorn."

THE HARE.

THE hare of Syria differs in no material respect from that of our own country. Dr. Russell, in his "National History of Aleppo,” indeed divides the Syrian hare into two species, which he says differ considerably in point of size-the one inhabiting the plains, the other the desert; both, he adds, are abundant. It is probable that the division here assumed is entirely fanciful-the difference in the size resulting from the superior