be nourished and brought up, and especially how those of fuller growth, and much better qualified to look out for themselves are able to subsist.

The attachment of this bird to the barren solitudes of the Sahara, is frequently alluded to in the Holy Scriptures; particularly in the prophecies of Isaiah, where the word 10NEH, unfortunately translated owl in the English Bible, ought to be rendered ostrich. In the splendid palaces of Babylon, so long the scenes of joy and revelry, the prophet foretold, that the shy and timorous ostrich should fix her abode; than which a greater and more affecting contrast can scarcely be presented to the mind.

When the ostrich is provoked, she sometimes makes a fierce, angry, and hissing noise, with her throat inflated, and her mouth open; when she meets with a timorous adversary that opposes but a faint resistance to her assault, she chuckles or cackles like a hen, seeming to rejoice in the prospect of an easy conquest. But in the silent hours of night, she assumes a quite different tone, and makes a very doleful and hideous noise, which sometimes resembles the roaring of a lion; and at other times, that of the bull and the ox. She frequently groans, as if she were in the greatest agonies; an action to which the prophet beautifully alludes: 'I will make a mourning like the ostrich' Micah, i. 8. The Hebrew name of the bird is derived from a verb which signifies to exclain with a loud voice, and may therefore be attributed with sufficient propriety to the ostrich, whose voice is loud and sonorous; especially, as the word does not seem to denote any certain determined mode of voice or sound peculiar to any one particular species of animals, but one that may be applicable to them all. Dr. Brown says, the cry of the ostrich resembles the voice of a hoarse child, and is even more dismal. It cannot, then, but appear mournful, and even terrible, to those travellers who plunge with no little anxiety into those immense deserts, and to whom every living creature, man not excepted, is an object of fear, and a cause of danger.

Not more disagreeable, and even alarming, is the hoarse moaning voice of the ostrich, however, to the lonely traveller in the desert, than were the speeches of Job's friends to that afflicted man. Of their harsh and groundless censures, which were continually grating his ears, he feelingly complains: 'I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls [ostriches].' Like these melancholy creatures that love the solitary place, and the dark retirement, the bereaved and mourning patriarch loved to dwell alone, that he might be free from the teasing impertinence of his associates, and pour out his sorrows without restraint. But he made a wailing also like the dragons, and a mourning like the ostriches; his condition was as destitute, and his lamentations as loud and incessant as theirs. Or, he compares to those birds his unfeeling friends, who, instead of pouring the balm of consolation into his smarting wounds, added to the poignancy of his grief by their inhuman conduct. The ostrich, even in a domestic state, is a rude and fierce animal; and is

said to point her hostility, with particular virulence, against the poor and destitute stranger that happens to come in her way. Not satisfied with endeavoring to push him down by running furiously upon him, she will not cease to peck at him violently with her bill, and to strike at him with her feet, and will sometimes inflict a very serious wound. The dispositions and behavior of Job's friends and domestics were equally vexatious and afflicting; and how much reason he had to complain, will appear from the following statement: "They that dwell in mine house, and my maidens, count me for a stranger; I am an alien in their sight. I called my servant, and he gave me no answer; my breath is strange to my wife, though I entreated for the children's sake of mine own body; yea, young children despised me, all my inward friends abhorred me. Upon my right hand rise the youth; they push away my feet, and they raise up against me the ways of their destruction. They mar my path, they set forward my calamity, they have no helper. They come upon me as a wide breaking in of waters, in the desolation they roll themselves upon me,' ch. xxx. 12—14.

There is a very correct and poetical description of the ostrich, in the thirty-ninth chapter of the book of Job.

Our translators appear to have been influenced by the vulgar error, that the ostrich did not herself hatch her eggs by sitting on them, but left them to the heat of the sun. This, however, is not the fact. She usually sits upon her eggs as other birds do; but then she so often wanders, and so far in search of food, that frequently the eggs are addle, by means of her long absence from them. To this we may add, that when she has left her nest, whether through fear or to seek food, if she light upon the eggs of some other ostrich, she sits upon them, and is unmindful of her own.

'On the least noise or trivial occasion,' says doctor Shaw, 'she forsakes her eggs, or her young ones, to which, perhaps, she never returns; or if she does, it may be too late either to restore life to the one, or to preserve the lives of the others. Agreeable to this account, the Arabs meet sometimes with whole nests of these eggs undisturbed; some of them are sweet and good, others are addle and corrupted; others, again, have their young ones of different growth, according to the time, it may be presumed, they may have been forsaken of the dam. They often meet with a few of the little ones no bigger than well-grown pullets, half starved, straggling and moaning about, like so many distressed orphans for their mother. In this manner the ostrich may be said to be hardened against her young ones, as though they were not her's; her labor, in hatching and attending them so far, being vain, without fear, or the least concern of what becomes of them afterwards. This want of affection is also recorded in Lam. iv. 3. "The daughter of my people is become cruel, like ostriches of the wilderness;" that is by apparently deserting their own, and receiving others in return. Hence, one of the great causes of lamentation was, the coming in of strangers and enemies into Zion, and possessing it. Thus, in the twelfth verse

of this chapter, it is said, "The kings of the earth, and all the inhabitants of the world, would not have believed that the adversary and the enemy should have entered into the gates of Jerusalem;" and in ch. v. 2, "Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens."'

The ostrich, in her private capacity, is not less inconsiderate and foolish, particularly in the choice of food, which is often highly detrimental and pernicious to her; for she swallows everything greedi̟ly and indiscriminately, whether it be pieces of rags, leather, wood, stone, or iron. They are particularly fond of their own ordure, which they greedily eat up as soon as it is voided: no less fond are they of the dung of hens and other poultry. It seems as if their optic, as well as their olfactory nerves, were less adequate and conducive to their safety and preservation, than in other creatures. The Divine Providence in this, no less than in other respects, 'having deprived them of wisdom, neither hath it imparted to them understanding.' This part of her character is fully admitted by Buffon, who describes it in nearly the same terms.

Notwithstanding the stupidity of the ostrich, says Dr. Shaw, its Creator hath amply provided for its safety, by endowing it with extraordinary swiftness, and a surprising apparatus for escaping from its enemy. They, when they raise themselves up for flight, laugh at the horse and his rider.' They afford him an opportunity only of admiring at a distance the extraordinary agility, and the stateliness likewise, of their motions, the richness of their plumage, and the great propriety there was in ascribing to them an expanded quivering wing. Nothing, certainly, can be more entertaining than such a sight; the wings, by their rapid but unwearied vibrations, equally serving them for sails and oars; while their feet, no less assisting in conveying them out of sight, are no less insensible of fatigue.'

The surprising swiftness of this bird is expressly mentioned by Xenophon, in his Anabasis; for, speaking of the desert of Arabia, he states that the ostrich is frequently seen there; that none could take them, the horsemen who pursue them soon giving it over; for they escaped far away, making use both of their feet to run, and of their wings, when expanded, as a sail to waft them along.' This representation is confirmed by the writer of a voyage to Senegal, who says, 'She sets off at a hard gallop; but, after being excited a little, she expands her wings as if to catch the wind, and abandons herself to a speed so great, that she seems not to touch the ground.' "I am persuaded,' continues the writer, 'she would leave far behind the swiftest English courser.' Buffon, also, admits that the ostrich runs faster than the horse.

OUR translators have very improperly introduced the peacock into Job xxxix. 13, as the bird was unknown in Syria till the days of Solomon. In the first 'book of Kings (ch. x. 22), and the parallel passage of the second of Chronicles (ch. ix. 21), it is enumerated among the costly articles imported by the ships of Tarshish, employed by the Hebrew monarch to enrich his country with the produce of foreign nations. Let any one attentively survey the peacock in all the glorious display of the prismatic colors in his train, says Parkhurst, and he will not be surprised that Solomon's mariners, who cannot be supposed ignorant of their master's taste for natural history, should bring some of these wonderful birds with them, from their southern expedition.

The peacock is a bird originally of India, and thence brought in

to Persia and Media. The fleet of Solomon might easily procure it, either from India itself, or from Persia.

The peacock is admitted to be one of the most beautiful birds of the feathered tribes. The feathers of its tail are frequently four feet in length, and when expanded, present a mixture of the most delightful colors. Its head, neck, and breast, are of a beautiful blue color; the back and upper part of the wings are light ash, mixed with black stripes; and on its head it carries a plume of greenish feathers. The dispositions of the peacock, however, are of a very different character from its plumage; and the common people of Italy are said to characterize it truly, who say it has the plumage of an angel, and the voice of a devil. The loud scream of its voice grates unpleasantly on the ear; and its insatiable gluttony, and spirit of depredation, more than counterbalance the beauty of its external form.

Ir the reader will turn to the account of the ostrich, he will see that we have referred several passages of scripture to that bird, which, in our translations of the Bible, are interpreted of the owl.