348 POPULAR SCRIPTURE ZOOLOGY.

public library at Cambridge, are very instructive. The roll
was discovered by Dr. Claudius Buchanan, in the record .
chest of the black Jews in Malabar, supposed to be de-
scended from the first dispersion of the Hebrew nation, by
Nebuchadnezzar. The date of the manuscript could not be
ascertained, but the text is supposed to have been derived
from those copies which their ancestors brought with them
to India. It is written ona roll of goats’ skins dyed red,
and measures forty-eight feet in length by twenty-two
mehes in breadth. As it wants Leviticus and the greater
part of Deuteronomy, it is calculated that its original length
must have been not less than ninety Enylish feet. In its
present condition it consists of thirty-seven skins, compre-
hending one hundred and seventy columns four inches in
breadth, and containing each from forty to fifty lines. Dr.
Buchanan states, that the Cabul Jews, who travel into the
interior of China, say that in some synagogues the law is
still written on a roll of leather, made of goats’ skins dyed
red; not on vellum, but on a soft flexible leather.

- Parchment is but an improvement, although a very im-
portant one, on the process just mentioned. It was one of
the latest, if not the latest, of the various processes we have
noticed, although some assign it a very early date, for want