10 POPULAR SCRIPTURE ZOOLOGY.

may be recognized the wild goat, oryx, gazelle, hare, and
porcupine. It is evident that the Jewish monarchs had
adopted the custum of keeping beasts of chase, as well as
cattle, in enclosures; for we read that the daily provisions
for Solomon’s household were “ten fat oxen, and twenty
oxen out of the pasture, and an hundred sheep, besides
harts, and roebucks, and fallow deer, and fatted fowl.”
The antelope is frequently figured, and these graceful crea-
tures appear to have been great favourites with the Egyp-
tian ladies; the Egyptian princess, in Solomon’s Song, is
accordingly represented making use of the following ex-
pression :—“I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,
by the roes and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not
up, nor awake my love, till he please.” Fowling was evi-
dently a favourite sport with the people of Egypt, as may
be gathered from numerous paintings: the birds were caught
with different kinds of nets; and how many allusions there
are to this practice in the Scriptures—“For man also
knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an
evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare, so
are the sons of men, snared in an evil time, when it falleth
suddenly upon them.” And again: “As a bird hasteth to
the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life.’ The