quality and supply of food in the one case to the other.

It has been made matter of objection to the identification of the hare with the animal mentioned in Scripture, that the former is not a ruminating animal. More minute observation has, however, discovered that the hare in part chews the cud. It is not indeed furnished with the compound stomach, peculiar to ruminating animals, but as it sits in its form, as its seat is called, in the language of the hunter, it is well known occasionally to bring up a portion of its food and give it a second mastication.

Under the Mosaic dispensation the use of the hare for food was expressly forbidden. The only places in which it is mentioned in Scripture are Levit. xi. 6, and Deut. xiv. 7.

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CHAPTER VI.

WILD ANIMALS CONTINUED.

THE HIPPOPOTAMUS (" BEHEMOTH")- -THE ORYX-THE APE-THE JERBOA ("MOUSE")—THE BADGER—THE GECKO (“FERRET”)—THE FROG—THE CHAMELEON.

THE HIPPOPOTAMUS (“ BEHEMOTH").

PERHAPS none of the animals mentioned in Scripture has been the subject of more speculation than the one which we believe to be the Hippopotamus ("Behemoth"). Some interpreters have laboured to prove that the animal indicated is an immense quadruped of a genus altogether extinct, such as the mastodon or mammoth. Others have been equally strenuous in asserting the claims of the elephant. It seems now, however, to be generally allowed, that the hippopotamus is 'the animal referred to.

The hippopotamus is an inhabitant of the rivers and lakes of Abyssinia and Ethiopia. It was formerly found in the lower regions of the Nile. Its size is enormous; the male, it is said, has been found seventeen feet in length, fifteen in circumference, and seven in height. These measurements are, however, perhaps somewhat exaggerated. One killed by M. Le Vaillant in the South of Africa, measured ten feet seven inches in length, and about nine feet in circumference. The form of the animal is uncouth in the highest degree. Its body is large and round, of a lightish brown colour, thinly covered with hair; its legs very short and thick; its head disproportionately large; its jaws sometimes extending upwards of two feet; its mouth is extremely wide, and is furnished with four cutting teeth of great size and strength; its eyes and ears are small, and its tail short and thick. Though the animal is amphibious, its quadrifid hoofs are unconnected by membrane.

The hippopotamus frequents the sedgy banks of rivers and lakes, and on the least alarm takes to the water, dives to the bottom, and there walks

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