354 POPULAR SCRIPTURE ZOOLOGY.

kind of vessel, as is evident from various passages in the
Old and New Testament; and this custom still continues
in the East. Skin bottles were not peculiar to Asia, they
were equally employed by the Greeks and Romans. Homer
speaks of goat-skins,

*Tumid with the vine’s
All-cheering juice.”

There are many interesting illustrations of this custom in
the paintings at Herculaneum and Pompeii: one represents
a girl pouring wine from a kid-skin into a vase, and another
shows a large skin of wine mounted on a cart, and being
drawn off into amphore, or earthen vessels.

Keeping in mind the nature of the ancient bottles, the
Biblical student will find no difficulty in comprehending
the various allusions dispersed throughout the Scriptures ;
such as Job’s expression, “It is ready to burst like new
bottles ;” that in the 119th Psalm, “ For I am become like
a bottle in the smoke,” that is, shrivelled, dried up, as lea-
ther would be by a lengthened exposure to the influence of
heat and smoke; in Joshua ix., “These bottles of wine
which we filled were new; and behold they be rent;” and
in Matthew ix., “Neither do men put new wine into old