68 POPULAR SCRIPTURE ZOOLOGY.

Thus, in Psalms, “The sorrows of hell compassed me
about ; the sxares of death prevented me.” “The proud
have hid a snare for me, and cords; they have spread a
net by the wayside; they have set gius for me.” In the
sculptures on a rock at Takt-i-Bostan, in Persia, is repre-
sented a large enclosure, formed of poles and nets, into
which the animals are being driven by hunters on elephants
or horses, who are engaged in slaughtering them with spears
and arrows. Plutarch mentions hunting nets belonging to
the Macedonian conquerors, capable of enclosing a space
measuring a hundred furlongs.

“The lion, as an ancient Christian symbol, is of frequent
recurrence, more particularly in architectural decorations.
Antiquarians are not agreed as to the exact meaning at-
tached to the mystical lions placed in the porches of so many
old Lombard churches, sometimes with an animal, some-
times with a man in their paws. But we find that the lion
was an ancient symbol of the Redeemer, ‘the lion of the
tribe of Judah ;’ also of the resurrection of the Redeemer,
because, according to an Oriental fable, the lion’s cub was
born dead, and in three days its sire licked it into life. In
this sense it occurs in the windows of the cathedral at
Bourges. The lion also typifies solitude—the wilderness,