70 POPULAR SCRIPTURE ZOOLOGY.

less distinct. The leopard is an active, graceful animal,
fierce and rapacious, like most of its tribe, and is generally
captured by means of snares or pitfalls. One species seems
to have been of frequent occurrence in Palestine, as several
places bear its name; there seems to be no question that the
leopard was meant, as the word used denotes this animal
in the Chaldee, Syriac, and Ethiopian languages; and in
Jeremiah xiii. there is an allusion to its spotted skin: “Can
the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots ?”
The leopard is still met with in Syria and Arabia, though
by no means abundantly ; its swiftness is proverbial in all
countries where it is known, and suggested the idea of
taming and using it in the chase. In Habakkuk, ch. i, is
the following expression :—‘ Their horses also are swifter
than the leopards.” Harmer suggests that the figure here
employed may have been more striking to the people, from
their having seen the prodigious feats of leopards used in
the royal chase. They were certainly thus employed in
ancient Egypt, as is shown by their paintings; but it is
rarely that they are used for this purpose in Western Asia
at the present day, the practice being still common in the
East. In India the cheetah is most frequently employed,
and there seems little doubt that the species known to the