16 POPULAR SCRIPTURE ZOOLOGY.

name. In the complaints made by the Israelites against
Moses in the desert, they particularly regret the fish of the
land of bondage: “ We remember the fish that we did eat
in Egypt freely.” Isaiah also, when denouncing divine
vengeance upon the Egyptians, dwells strongly on the ruin
of those who subsisted on the fish and other productions of
the Nile :— And the waters shall fail from the sea, and
the rivers shall be wasted and dried up. And they shall
turn the rivers far away ; and the brooks of defence shall
be emptied and dried up; the reeds and flags shall wither.
The paper-reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks,
and everything sown by the brooks, shall wither, be driven
away, and be no more. The fishers also shall mourn, and
all they that cast angle into the brooks shall lament, and they
that spread nets upon the waters shall languish. Moreover,
they that work in fine flax, and they that weave net-works,
shall be confounded. And they shall be broken in the
purposes thereof, all that make sluices and ponds for fish.”
Diodorus says, that twenty-two kinds of fish were found in
Lake Meeris. .

From the representations of this subject on Egyptian
monuments, we gather, that the fishermen were of an in-
ferior class to the agricultural population, and this is con-