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claims that have been advanced in favor of those animals which are supposed to be the reem of the Hebrew Scriptures. Let us first hear Mr. Bruce.

'It is very remarkable,' says this distinguished traveller, 'that two such animals as the elephant and the rhinoceros should have wholly escaped the description of the sacred writers. Moses and the children of Israel were long in the neighborhood of the countries which produced them both, while in Egypt and in Arabia. The classing of the animals into clean and unclean seems to have led the legislator into a kind of necessity of describing, in one of the classes, an animal which made the food of the principal pagan nations in the neighborhood. Considering the long and intimate connexion Solomon had with the south coast of the Red Sea, it is next to impossible that he was not acquainted with them, as both David his father, and he himself, made plentiful use of ivory, as they frequently mention in their writings, which, along with gold, came from the same parts. Solomon, besides, wrote expressly on Zoology, and we can scarce suppose he was ignorant of two of the principal articles of that part of the creation, inhabitants of the great continent of Asia east from him, and that of Africa on the south, with both which territories he was in constant correspondence.

"There are two animals named frequently in scripture without naturalists being agreed what they are. The one is the behemoth, the other the reem; both mentioned as types of strength, courage, and independence on man; and, as such, exempted from the ordinary lot of beasts, to be subdued by him, or reduced under his dominion. Though this is not to be taken in a literal sense, for there is no animal without the fear or beyond the reach of the power of man, we are to understand it of animals possessed of strength and size so superlative, as that in these qualities other beasts bear no proportion to them.'

The behemoth Mr. Bruce takes to be the elephant, in which we differ from him; and the reem he argues to be the rhinoceros, from the following considerations.

The derivation of the word, both in Hebrew and Ethiopic, seems to be from erectness or standing straight. This is certainly no particular quality in the animal itself, who is not more, or even so much erect as many other quadrupeds, for its knees are rather crooked; but it is from the circumstance and manner in which his horn is placed. The horns of all other animals are inclined to some degree of parallelism with the nose, or os frontis. The horn of the rhinoceros alone is erect or perpendicular to this bone, on which it stands at right angles; thereby possessing a greater purchase or power, as a lever, than any horn could possibly have in any other position.

This situation of the horn is very happily alluded to in the sacred writings: My horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of a reem,' Psalm xcii. 10. And the horn here alluded to is not wholly figurative, but was really an ornament worn by great men in the days of victory,

preferment, or rejoicing, when they were anointed with new, sweet, or fresh oil: a circumstance which David joins with that of erecting the horn.

It is difficult to imagine why some writers have been induced to consider the unicorn as being of the deer or antelope kind, since this is of a genus, whose very character is fear and weakness, quite opposite, as Mr. Bruce remarks, to the qualities by which the REEM is described in scripture. Besides it is plain that the reem is not of the class of clean quadrupeds; and a late modern traveller very whimsically takes him for the leviathan, which certainly was a fish. Balaam, a priest of Midian, and so in the neighborhood of the haunts of the rhinoceros, and intimately connected with Ethiopia (for they themselves were shepherds of that country), in a transport, from contemplating the strength of Israel whom he was brought to curse, says, they had as it were 'the strength of the reem,' Numbers xxiii. 22. Job makes frequent allusions to his great strength, ferocity, and indocility, ch. xxxix. 9, 10. He asks, Will the reem be willing to serve thee, or to abide at thy crib?' That is, will he willingly come into thy stable, and eat at thy manger? and again: 'Canst thou bind the reem with a band in the furrow, and will he harrow the valleys after thee? In other words, canst thou make him to go in the plough or harrow?

Isaiah (ch. xxxiv. 7), who of all the prophets, seems to have known Egypt and Ethiopia the best, when prophesying about the destruction of Idumea, says, that 'the reem shall come down with the fat cattle: a proof that he knew his habitation was in the neighborhood. In the same manner as when foretelling the desolation of Egypt, he mentions as one manner of effecting it, the bringing down the fly from Ethiopia, to meet the cattle in the desert and among the bushes, and destroy them there, where that insect did not ordinarily come but on commands (comp. Isaiah vii. 18, 19; and Exodus viii. 22), and where the cattle feed every year, to save themselves from that insect.

The principal reason for translating the word reem, unicorn, and not rhinoceros, is from a prejudice that he must have but one horn. But this is by no means so well founded, as to be admitted an argument for establishing the existence of an animal which never has appeared after the search of so many ages. Scripture, as we have seen, speaks of the horns of the unicorn; so that, even from this circumstance, the reem may be the rhinoceros, as the Asiatic. and part of the African rhinoceros may be the unicorn.

In addition to these particulars, Mr. Bruce informs us, that the rhinoceros does not eat hay or grass, but lives entirely upon trees; he does not spare the most thorny ones, but rather seems to be fond of them; and it is not a small branch that can escape his hunger; for he has the strongest jaws of any creature known, and best adapted to grinding or bruising any thing that makes resistance. But, besides, the trees capable of inost resistance, there are in the vast forests which he inhabits, trees of a softer consistence, and of a

very succulent quality, which seem to be destined for his principal food. For the purpose of gaining the highest branches of these, his upper lip is capable of being lengthened out, so as to increase his power of laying hold with this, in the same manner as the elephant does with his trunk. With this lip, and the assistance of his tongue, he pulls down the upper branches, which have most leaves, and these he devours first; having stript the tree of its branches, he does not therefore abandon it, but placing his snout as low in the trunk as he finds his horn will enter, he rips up the body of the tree, and reduces it to thin pieces, like so many laths; and when he has thus prepared it, he embraces as much of it as he can in his monstrous jaws, and twists it with as much ease as an ox would do a root of celery.

Such is the description which this intelligent writer gives of the animal he supposes to be the reem of the sacred writers; and the objections urged against his opinion possess very little weight. Those who desire to see them examined and refuted, may find it done in the Natural History of the Fragments to Calmet.

Next to the elephant, the rhinoceros is said to be the most powerful of animals. It is usually found twelve feet long, from the tip of the nose to the insertion of the tail; from six to seven feet high; and the circumference of its body is nearly equal to its length. It is, therefore, equal to the elephant in bulk; and the reason of its appearing so much smaller to the eye than that animal, is, that its legs are much shorter. Words, says Goldsmith, can convey but a very confused idea of this animal's shape; and yet there are few so remarkably formed. But for its horn, which we have already described, its head would have the appearance of that part of a hog. The skin of the rhinoceros is naked, rough, knotty, and lying upon the body in folds, in a very peculiar manner; the skin, which is of a dirty brown color, is so thick as to turn the edge of a scimitar, and to resist a musket-ball.

Such is the general description of an animal that appears chiefly formidable from the horn growing from its snout; and formed, rather for war, than with a propensity to engage. The elephant, the boar, and the buffalo, are obliged to strike transversely with their weapon; but the rhinoceros, from the situation of his horn, employs all his force with every blow; so that the tiger will more willingly attack any other animal of the forest than one whose strength is so justly employed. Indeed, there is no force which this terrible animal has to apprehend: defended on every side by a thick horny hide, which the claws of the lion or the tiger are unable to pierce, and armed before with a weapon that the elephant does not choose to oppose. Travellers have assured us, that the elephant is often found dead in the forests, pierced with the horn of a rhinoceros.

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