THE RIVER-HORSE. 77

boscis, its tusks, its docility, and sagacity. It is possible
that the creature here alluded to is extinct, but certainly
the description agrees remarkably well with the hippopota-
mus, and still more so in the original than in our trans-
lation. The Jews have a curious and absurd notion on
this subject. They hold that Behemoth is a large animal
which has subsisted since the creation, and which is re-
served to be fattened, for the feast to be enjoyed by pious
Jews in the days of the Messiah. Every day he eats up all
the grass of a thousand hills, and at each draught swallows
as much water as the Jordan yields in the course of
six months. Such is or has been their opinion*.

“He eateth grass as an ox.” This seems to have been
considered and noticed as something remarkable; and it
certainly is so in the case of the hippopotamus, which, being
an inhabitant of the water, still eats the produce of the
land. The last verse is in our translation very. obscure,
but that of Boothroyd agrees very well with an amphibious
animal, such as the river-horse :—

**Lo, should a river overflow, he hasteneth not;
He is secure, though Jordan rush to his mouth.”

* Notes to the ‘ Pictorial Bible,’