THE HORNET. 307

pest; amongst wild animals even the thick hide of the
elephant and rhinoceros is no protection against their viru-
lence, and as these cannot remove to the sandy regions,
owing to the nature of their food, they are obliged to roll
themselves in mud, which, when dry, forms a kind of armour
against their winged adversaries. “If we compare this
account with the passage in Isaiah above referred to, in
which the Lord threatens to call for ‘the fly of Ethopia’
as an agent for the punishment of iniquity, and if this be
really the insect to which the text refers, the probability
seems to be that the zimd was not then, any more than now,
a native of Palestine; but that swarms of them were drawn
from Ethiopia to execute the divine will. The Canaanites
would be the more terrified by the calamity, from being un-
acquainted with its nature; they could not, therefore, regu-
late their flight by that knowledge of the insect’s habits
which the Abyssinians possess*.”

Virgil thus truly describes this insect under the name
Asilus, ptobably only a different pronunciation of Aa-tzirah,
by which it is called in the writings of Moses and Joshua.

' Of winged insects mighty swarms are seen ;
This flying plague (to mark its quality)
* Pictorial Bible.