ment is there between the hyæna and the dog?" A sufficient proof that the antipathy was so well known as to be proverbial. In 1 Sam. xiii. 18, “the valley of Zeboim," Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion render Papayya Twv vaivav, the valley of Hyanas. The Chaldee Targum on the passage, reads it yo; substituting for, and so understanding it vipers, as if some party-coloured serpents were there intended, of which Bochart shows there are several sorts, and one in particular, called by the Greeks varva, no doubt from its streaked skin. This valley is again mentioned, Nehem. xi. 34, and has its appellation from having been the haunt of the tseboa. Our translators render yay 'y in Jer. xii. 9, "a speckled bird;" but the LXX, who must not only have best known the meaning of the original, but be best acquainted with the natural history of the country, have rendered it σryλalov váys, the cave of the hyana. The learned Bochart, excellently and at large defends this reading 18; according to which, the passage would be "My heritage is unto me as the ravenous hyæna: Bishop Blaney, in a long and very ingenious note upon the place, vindicates his translating it "the ravenous bird TSEBOA;" acknowledging, however, that "there is no determining with certainty, the particular species of bird to which the name yay is given.' But the continuator of Calmet, has a criticism which clears up the difficulty, and restores the allusion to the hyana. His remarks, with a translation a little varied, I shall adopt. "I have abandoned my dwelling ; I have relinquished my heritage; The place I delighted in I have surrendered to enemies. Mine heritage became to me as a lion's lair; Its inhabitant gave out its growl against me, Insomuch that I therefore hated it. Like the OITH TJEBUO is my heritage to me: [i. e. repelling my approach at any part.] "The idea seems to be that of a person, who, having met with ingratitude, leaves the ingrateful to all calamities; his field having got one wild beast in it, he relinquishes it to all wild beasts. The question is, What is this wild beast? Let us investigate the import of the words. "The word OITH, signifies the rusher;' whether bird, beast, or man. The word TJEBUO, signifies streaked or striped: the 18 "Accedat itaque necesse est pertinax Bochartorum et Oedmannorum industria, et felix ingenium ad istas in Hist. Nat. Sacra dispellandas tenebras." Tyschen, Physiol. Sacr. p. 30. striped rusher,' then, is the literal meaning of the words used. The HYÆNA is the animal most probably intended. "It is well known at Aleppo (says Russell), lives in the hills at no great distance from the town; and is held in great horror.' It is of the size of a large dog; is remarkably striped or streaked; has much similitude to the wolf, in nature and form, but has only four toes on each foot, in which it is very nearly singular; it is extremely wild, sullen, and ferocious; will sometimes attack men; rushes with great fury on flocks and cattle; ransacks graves, devours dead bodies," &c. Our critic adds: "I cannot avoid suggesting a possibility that that very obscure animal the sheeb may be the tjabuo of this place. I find the following account of it in Russell, Vol. ii. p. 185. The natives talk of another animal, named sheeb, which they consider as distinct from the wolf, and reckon more ferocious. Its bite is said to be mortal, and that it occasions raving madness before death. It is like the wolf; is perhaps only a mad wolf. Long intervals elapse in which nothing is heard of the sheeb. In 1772 the forepart and tail of one was brought from Spheery to Dr. Freer. It was shot near Spheery; was one of several that had followed the Bassora caravan over the desert, from near Bassora to Aleppo. Many persons in the caravan had been bitten, all of whom died in a short time, raving mad. It was reported that some near Aleppo were bitten, and died in like manner; but the doctor saw none himself. The circumference of the body and neck rather exceed that of the wolf.' If an animal of properties so terrible had taken its abode in any person's heritage, no wonder he should abandon it to its fate. As the creature was scarce (never seen by Dr. Russell, or his brother), may not this account for the ignorance of translators? Were a mad dog to get into any one's house here, would he not quit it? This creature coming from the desert, agrees with the valley of Zeboim, towards the wilderness."" IBIS. A bird peculiar to Egypt, and, in early ages, held there in the utmost veneration, so that it was deemed a capital crime to kill one. Polyæneus, Stratagem. belli, lib. vii. states that Cambyses, king of Persia, who was not unacquainted with this superstition, placed some of these birds before his army while he besieged Damietta. The Egyptians, not daring to shoot against them, nor consequently against the enemy, suffered the town to be taken, which was the key of Egypt. The ibis feeds upon serpents and destroys their eggs, and also devours destructive reptiles and insects; and is thus very ser viceable to the inhabitants. This, probably, is the reason for the grateful estimation in which the bird was formerly held. Hasselquist is inclined to believe the ardea Ibis to be the ibis of the ancient Egyptians, but Bruce has made it very evident that the ibis is the bird now called Abou Hannes in Egypt. That the bird was known to the Hebrews seems highly probable, and under the article OWL, in the preceding part of this work, I have mentioned it. For a particular account of this celebrated bird, I refer to a memoir by J. Pearson, in the Philosophical Transactions for 1805, part 2. "Histoire naturelle et mythologique d'Ibis, par M. Sevigny, avec planches, Paris, 1805;" to the Monthly Review, new series, vol. xlvi. p. 523, and xlix. p. 531; and to a memoir on the ibis of the ancients by Cuvier, in the Annales de Museum, vol. iv.; Paris, 1804. He denominates it the Nume nius Ibis. IVY. KIZZOΣ. Lat. Hedera. In this passage we are informed that "the Jews were compelled to go in procession to Bacchus, carrying ivy." The feasts of this heathen god were celebrated by frantic votaries crowned with ivy. LOTUS. Some have thought the plant translated "leek" in Numbers, xi. 5, to be the lotus; and Lowth so renders the word which in our version of Isaiah, xix. 6, is called "flags." The lotus is an aquatic plant peculiar to Egypt; a kind of water lily; which, says Homer, Il. xxii. "is the first of plants which grow for the pleasure of the gods." Alpinus, de Plantis Ægypti, p. 103, says "this is the white nenuphar. The Egyp tians, during the heats of summer, eat the whole stalk, raw, with the upper parts: they are watery, proper to moisten and refresh; and are called razelnil.” Herodotus, Hist. Euterpe, § xcii. says, "the Egyptians who inhabit the marshy grounds, to procure themselves more easily the means of sustenance make use of the following expedient: when the waters have risen to their extremest height, and all their fields are overflowed, there appears above the surface an immense quantity of plants of the lily species, which the Egyptians call the lotos; these having cut down they dry in the sun. The seed of the flower, which resembles that of the poppy, they make into a kind of bread and bake; they also eat the root of this plant, which is round, of an agreeable flavour, and about the size of an apple. There is a second species of the lotos which grows in the Nile: the root of which is very grateful either fresh or dried." M. Sonnini describes the lotus as a water lily, with white and odoriferous flowers 19. He remarks that its roots form a tubercle, which is gathered when the waters of the Nile subside, and is 19 Travels in Egypt, translated by Hunter, vol. i. p. 314. See also Forskal, Flor. Egyptiaca. p. 100. Le Pluche. Hist. of the Heavens, vol. ii. p. 308; and Shaw's Travels, ed. 4to. p. 143, note. boiled and eaten like potatoes, which it somewhat resembles in taste. This forms one of the most common aliments of the Egyptians now, as we learn from history it did those of ancient times. It appears singular that several authors, from Maillet down to M. Pau, should have overlooked this lotus in the nymphea, and that the latter should have declared that this plant had disappeared out of Egypt, where it formerly grew in great abundance. But what has contributed to confuse the history of the lotus nymphea is, that it has frequently been mistaken for a totally different plant, which the ancients also called lotus, and which composed the principal nourishment of certain nations of Africa, who, on that account, were called "lotophagi." This latter bears no relation to the lotus which grows in Egypt; but is a shrub, a species of wild jujube-tree, as M. Desfontaines has ascertained, and which grows in several parts of Barbary 20 MASTIC-TREE. ΣΚΙΝΟΣ. t Occ. Susannah, v. 40. The mastic or lentisk tree rises with a stalk ten or twelve feet high, dividing into many branches covered with a dark brown bark. The leaves are placed alternate on the branches; are about an inch and a half long, and half an inch broad at their base, lessening gradually to a point, and have a few saws on their edges: they are of a lucid green, and when bruised emit a turpentine odour. The flowers are produced in loose bunches at the end of the branches: they are small, white, and have no fragrance. Mastic gum is procured from the tree by making incisions in the bark; from these, says Mr. Legh, Journey, Lond. 1817, p. 17, a liquid juice distils, that gradually hardens, forming tears, which either remain attached to the shrub, or fall on the ground, and are afterwards gathered up. It is fragrant, and is principally used for disorders of the gums and teeth. pre Under the article "Holm-tree," I have mentioned the reference to this tree by the apocryphal writer of the story of Susannah. Michaelis, in his Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, vol. iv. p. 335, remarks that "the play upon the words is merely a Greek paronomasia between oxivos and oxit; according to Porphyry's shrewd remark, which we know from Jerom's face to his exposition of Daniel, and to which, as an objection, Jerom very properly replied, that it did not at all affect the book of Daniel, because the story of Susannah was not found in the Hebrew; nor did it, even in the Greek belong to that prophet; being only a part of a book ascribed to Habakkuk the son of Jesus, of the tribe of Levi. We find, moreover, Jerom himself adducing these Greek puns as a proof that this book was not genuine, but a fiction of a later period. 20 Journal de Physique, Oct. 1783. The Rhamnus Lotus Linnæi. "The word axvos means the mastic-tree, a native of the island of Chio, a country which was anciently so entirely unknown in Asia that it has not so much as a name in Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, or Chaldee. For the Arabs and Chaldeans borrow it from the Greek; and in this very passage, the oriental translators, not understanding what ovos meant, name any tree that occurs to them and one Arabic version absolutely retains the Greek word, expressing it very awkwardly in Arabic letters, al-schakin. A tree, therefore, is specified in the first man's answer, which, in all probability, was not then known in Babylon." .בשרד .OCHRE A fossil earth, of a chalky nature. Bishop Lowth translates the Hebrew word, improperly rendered "line" in our version of Isai. xliv. 13, red-ochre. It may be of the kind found in the island of Ormus in the Persian gulf, whence it is by some called "Persian earth." This is of a fine purple, or glowing red colour, of a tolerably compact and hard texture. PHOENIX. The expression of Job, xxix. 18, " Then I said, I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my days as the sand," has been understood by some of the ancient interpreters to be an allusion to the phoenix, which is said to live several hundred years, and to expire in a funeral pile, prepared by itself of frankincense, and myrrh, and other aromatics, from which arises another phonix. The Jewish rabbins, who are fond of fabulous explications, were the first to propose this explication 21; and some of the Christian fathers adopted it: thus Tertullian quotes it. [De Resur. c. xiii.] as an image of the resurrection, as does also Epiphanius, in Physiologo, c. xi. See also the Apostolical Constitutions, 1. v. c. 7. Greg. Nazianz, Carm. 3. Origen, contra Cels. I. iv. Eusebius, Vit. Constant. and Junius Patritius, Not. ad. Epist. Clem. ad Corinth 22. If the passage be an allusion to the palm-tree, it may relate either to its vigorous growth, to which there are several references in Scripture, or to the fresh shoots which put out from the stump after the tree is cut down 23. Pliny, N. H. 1. xiii. c. 4, remarks of the palm-tree, "Procerioribus sylva arbore ex 21 See R. Osaja in Bereschit Rabba; Midras Samuel, sect. xii. Pomarius, in libr. Tsemach. and S. Jarchi, whom the author of the Tigurin version follows. 22 For some curious particulars of this "rara avis in terra," see Kæmpfer, Amoenitates exoticæ, p. 662, and his history of Japan, p. 124. Pliny, N. H. 1. x. c. 2. Tacitus, Annal. I. vi. c. 28. Dion. Hist. 1. vii. sub fin. Xiphilin. Vita Tiber. Aurel. Victor, Epist. de Claudio. Solinus, c. xlii. 23❝Ipsum Phoenicis nomen ex palma derivatum ferunt; quod arbor illa an nosa sit, et veluti post cineres renascens; cum in cineres redacto trunco, novo e radice germina erumpunt." Calmet, Prolegom. p. 335. "Mirum de ea acceppimus cum Phonice ave, quæ putatur ex hujus Palmæ (Syagrorum) argumento, nomen accepisse emori ac renasci a seipsa.” Plin. N. H. 1. xiii. c. 4. |