PREFACE.

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Tue little work now offered to the attention of the young
Biblical student, has been undertaken in the hope of ren-
dering some assistance in the elucidation of one, and not
the least interesting, branch of the Natural History of the
Scriptures. Leaving difficult points of doctrine to the
theologian ; critical research into antiquities, manners,
customs, and history, to the antiquary and historian; there
is still abundant interest and instruction to be found, in’
the too-often neglected field of Natural History, opened to
our view in the pages of the Bible ;—the history of those _
animated beings, which were created by the same Almighty
hand as ourselves, and are the objects of the same Al-
mighty care; with inferior powers indeed to those of man,