網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

"The two parents guard and feed each brood, one always remaining on it, while the other goes for food. They keep the young ones much longer in the nest than any other bird, and after they have led them out of it by day, they bring them back at night; preserving it as their natural and proper home.

"When they first take out the young, they practise them to fly; and they lead them to the marshes and to the hedge-sides, pointing them out the frogs, and serpents, and lizards, which are their proper food: and they seek out toads, which they never eat,* and take great pains to make the young distinguish them. In the end of autumn, not being able to bear the winter of Denmark, they gather in a great body about the sea-coasts, as we see swallows do, and go off together: the old ones leading the young ones in the centre, and a second body of the old behind. 1 They return in spring and betake themselves in families to their several nests. The people of Toningen and the neighbouring coasts gather together to see them come; for they are superstitious, and form certain presages from the manner of their flight. At this time it is not uncommon to see several of the old birds, which are tired and feeble with the long flight, supported at times on the backs of the young; and the peasants speak of it as a certainty, that many of these are, when they return to their home, laid carefully in the old nests, and cherished by the young ones which they reared with so much care the spring before.'

"If the account this gentleman gives be singular (says Sir John), it is in no part unnatural. We see innumerable instances of what we call instinct; and who shall say that this is too great for credit? Who shall lay down the laws to determine where the gifts of a Creator to his creatures shall stop, or how they shall be limited ?'

"The word CHASIDA, (says Mr. Merrick,) in his Commentary on Psalm civ. 17, is variously rendered by the ancient interpreters but Bochart observes, that the bird called by this name appears from scripture to be a bird of passage; a circumstance which belongs to none of the birds which the ancient versions suppose to be thus named, except the kite and the stork. Professor Michaëlis says, that the

"This circumstance is countenanced by Linnæus, who, mentioning the food of the stork, expressly says, that though they eat frogs, they avoid toads."

VOL. XII,

2 A

:

word is generally translated the stork; but adds, that this translation is founded on the authority of the Jews of the tenth century, and on that of the illustrious author of the Hierozoicon but these writers themselves, says he, havë been led by an arbitrary etymology to this interpretation, which is not, perhaps, to be met with in any of the ancient versions. To which we may answer, that this interpretation is certainly of earlier date than the tenth century; since Olympiodorus, in his commentary on Job (a work old enough to be mentioned by Anastasius Sinaita, who lived about the year 680), mentions, though with disapprobation, some interpreters who affirmed the CHASIDA to be the stork. M. Michaëlis thinks that this text of the Psalms, As for the stork the fir-trees are her house, makes against the stork; as though it be true that this bird sometimes builds on trees, yet it generally chooses to build on the tops of houses. Yet the same learned gentleman very judiciously proposes, that it be inquired whether, as, in the eastern countries, the roofs of houses are flat and inhabited, this very circumstance may not oblige them to build elsewhere. The following passage from Dr. Shaw's Travels may, at first, seem to determine the question: The storks breed plentifully in Barbary every summer. They make their nests with dry twigs of trees, which they place upon. the highest parts of old ruins or houses, in the canals of ancient aquæducts, and frequently (so familiar are they by being never molested) upon the very tops of their mosques and dwelling-houses. The fir and other trees, when these are wanting, are a dwelling for the stork. Here we see the storks building their nests upon the tops of the eastern houses; but, as Dr. Shaw has just before informed us, that the Mahometans account it profane to kill, or even hurt or molest them (to which we may add, from Hasselquist, that those persons among the Turks who own a house where storks have nested, are supposed to receive great blessings from heaven and to be free from all misfortunes), their access to the roofs is free and undisturbed; which might not be the case in Judea, where no such supposition appears to have prevailed. That they sometimes build on trees is allowed by M. Michaëlis himself, and confirmed by J. H. Michaëlis in his Commentary on the Psalms. may be still more to our purpose to observe, that Olympiodorus (who cannot well be supposed to have borrowed the idea from this psalm, as he does not allow the CHASIDA

It

to be the stork) affirms, in the place above referred to, that the stork lays its eggs, not on the ground, but on high trees. Bochart quotes also an Arabic writer, who says of this bird, it builds its nest in some very lofty place, either on the top of a tower or tree. A passage which he quotes from Varro, as it distinguishes the stork's manner of building from that of the swallow, seems greatly to favour our interpretation. Aldrovandus affirms of the black stork, that they are wont to make their nest on trees, particularly on fir-trees. And Strahlenberg speaks of storks that frequent great forests. The word agyst, continues Mr. Merrick, which he mentions as the Russian name of one kind of stork, does not seem so remote from the Hebrew name, but that it might possibly be derived from it, and may, on inquiry, lead to the discovery of some other name of that bird in languages akin to the Russian, which approach still nearer to it.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Besides, the Psalmist does not say that the CHASIDA makes its nest on the fir-trees, but that the fir-trees are its house; which may mean no more (to borrow the expression of Mr. Harmer, Obs. V. iv. p. 175) than that there they rest, there they sleep, after the wanderings of the day are over.' And Doubdan, as cited by the same author, positively affirms, that the prodigiously numerous storks which he saw between Cana and Nazareth, in Palestine, did,' in the evening, rest on trees,' that is, they roosted there. Jackson, in his Account of Morocco, p. 64, says, 'they are considered as sacred birds, and it is sacrilegious to kill one; for, besides being of the greatest utility in destroying serpents and other noxious reptiles, they are also emblematical of faith and conjugal affection, and on that account held in the highest estimation. They build their nests, which are curious, on the top of some old tower or castle, or on the terraces of uninhabited houses, where they constantly watch their young, exposed to the scorching rays of the sun. They will not suffer any one to approach their nests.'

"I have already remarked that it is a bird of passage. It is spoken of as such in scripture. Jer. viii. 7, The stork knoweth her appointed time,' &c.

"Who bid the stork, Columbus like, explore

Heavens not its own, and worlds unknown before?*

Who calls the council, states the certain day,
Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way?*

[ocr errors]

POPE.

"Bochart has collected testimonies of the migration of storks. Ælian, 1. iii. c. 13, says, that in summer time they remain stationary, but at the close of autumn they repair to Egypt, Libya and Ethiopia. For about the space of a fortnight before they pass from one country to another, (says Dr. Shaw,) they constantly resort together, from all the adjacent parts, in a certain plain; and there forming themselves, once every day, into a douwanne, or council (according to the phrase of these eastern nations), are said to determine the exact time of their departure, and the place of their future abodes.'

[ocr errors]

"These particulars are thus recited by the Poet of the Seasons:'

66

The stork-assembly meets; for many a day

Consulting deep and various, ere they take

Their arduous voyage through the liquid sky.
And now their route design'd, their leaders chose,
Their tribes adjusted, clean'd their vigorous wings,
And many a circle, many a short essay,
Wheel'd round and round, in congregation full
The figured flight ascends; and riding high
The aërial billows, mixes with the clouds.'

THOMSON.

"Milton also has described the flight of these birds :
"Part loosely wing the region, part, more wise,
In common, ranged in figure, wedge their way,
Intelligent of seasons, and set forth

Their airy caravan, high over seas

Flying, and over lands, with mutual wing
Easing their flight.""

We add to these extracts one more article, the Whale, in his account of which it will be seen that the author is not a stranger or an enemy to free Biblical Criticism.. "WHALE. Hebrew THAN and. THANNIN.

[ocr errors]

Occurs in

our translation, Gen. i. 21; Job vii. 12; and Ezek. xxxii. 2. KETOS, Matt. xii. 40.

"The largest of all the inhabitants of the water.

"It is well ascertained that the writers of the Bible

must have been ignorant of this animal; as it is never seen near Jerusalem or Egypt, and as they could have no history of Greenland and Spitzbergen. And a late author,* in a dissertation expressly for the purpose, has proved that the crocodile, and not the whale, is spoken of in Gen. i. 21. I shall transcribe his concluding argument.

"There yet remains an argument which proves that the crocodile, and not the whale, is to be understood in Gen, i. 21. At whatever time Moses wrote the book of Genesis, whether before or after the departure of the Israelites from Egypt, to assure them that the Lord their God was the creator of the crocodile has a manifest propriety, which is not to be found in the present translation. For he might naturally suppose, should they incline to idolatry, one of the first objects of their adoration would be the crocodile, which they had seen worshiped in Egypt.'

"And Dr. Geddest thinks that the circumstance of its being an Egyptian divinity, might induce the historian to particularize it, as being but a mere creature, like the rest.

"The word in Job vii. 12, must also be for the crocodile. It must mean some terrible animal, which, but for the watchful care of Divine Providence, would be very destructive. Our translators render it dragon in Isai. xxvii. 1, where the prophet gives this name to the king of Egypt: He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea. The sea there is the river Nile, and the dragon, the crocodile. Compare Ezek. xxxii. 2.

On this passage Bochart remarks, the THANNIN is not a whale, as people imagine; for a whale has neither feet nor scales, neither is it to be found in the rivers of Egypt; neither does it ascend therefrom upon the land; neither is it taken in the meshes of a net: all of which properties are ascribed by Ezekiel to the THANNIN of Egypt. Whence it is plain that it is not a whale that is here spoken of, but the crocodile.

"Merrick supposes David, in Psalm 1xxiv. 13, to speak of the tunnie, a kind of whale, with which he was probably acquainted: and Bochart thinks it has its Greek name thunnos from the Hebrew thanot. The last-mentioned fish is undoubtedly that spoken of in Psalm civ. 6.

* "Rev. James Hurdis, 'Critical Dissertation upon the true Meaning of the Hebrew Word translated Whale, in Gen. i. 21. 8vo. 1790.” "New translation of Gen. i. annexed to his proposals, &c,"

« 上一頁繼續 »