2 POPULAR SCRIPTURE ZOOLOGY.

greater amount of instruction relative to the habits and
peculiarities of the genus.

Our knowledge of Biblical Zoology is, and must remain
in a great degree, uncertain and imperfect; the references
being in most cases so vague, as to render it impossible
to define the species alluded to, and sometimes even the
genus is involved in the same degree of obscurity. Very
little light is thrown on the subject by modern travellers in
the Holy Land, as the wilder animals, it is said, have mostly
disappeared from Palestine. Hasselquist,a pupil of Lin-
nus, who visited the Holy Land in 1750, mentions, as the
only animals he saw, the porcupine, the jackal, the fox, the
rock goat, and the fallow deer. Captain Mangles describes
an animal of the goat species, “as large as an ass, with long,
knotty, upright horns; some specimens bearded, and their
colour resembling that of the gazelle.” The former writer
also enumerates the following birds as coming under his
own observation :—‘ Two species of vulture, one seen near
Jerusalem, the other near Cana of Galilee; the falcon near
Nazareth; the jackdaw in great numbers in the oak woods
of Galilee; the bee-catcher in the groves and plains
between Acra and Nazareth; the nightingale among the
willows of the Jordan and the olive-trees of Judea; the