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inimica. Nor is it to be doubted, that the Chaldee has the same meaning.

It will be remarked, says Mr. Taylor, that the miracles performed in Egypt, refer mostly, if not entirely, to the water and to the air. Gnats would be a mixture of both, as they originate in the water; and after citing several writers who speak of the torment occasioned by the sting of this insect, and of the great quantities in which they are found in Egypt, and some parts of the East, he concludes, by observing, 'The reader will judge from these representations whether the gnat does not bid fair to be the Hebrew cenim : being winged, it would spread over a district or country with equal ease as over a village or a city, and would be equally terrible to cattle as to men. It seems, also, to precede the dog-fly or zimb, with great propriety.

Isaiah li. 6 is rendered, in our version, 'they shall die in like manner;' a sense which destroys the force and beauty of the prophet's meaning. It may be better rendered, 'The earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die as a gnat.' Certainly the ephemeral life of any species of gnats would, as Geddes remarks, be a fitter image of the transitoriness of human life, than the very uncertain duration of the life of a louse: besides that, the figure would be less ignoble, and more congruous to the dignity of the subject.

SECTION II.

WINGED INSECTS.

THE FLY.

ONE of the plagues sent upon the incorrigible Egyptians, consisted of a swarm of flies, Exodus viii. 21, 24. The original term employed, is oreb, which the LXX translate by the dog-fly; and they have been followed by the learned Bochart, and most modern interpreters. For a description of this insect, as found in Ethiopia, we are indebted exclusively to Mr. Bruce.

'This insect is call Zimb; it has not been described by any naturalist. It is, in size, very little larger than a bee, of a thicker proportion, and his wings, which are broader than those of a bee, placed separate like those of a fly; they are of pure gauze, without color or spot upon them. The head is large, the upper jaw or lip is sharp, and has at the end of it a strong pointed hair, of about a quarter of an inch long; the lower jaw has two of these pointed hairs; and this pencil of hairs, when joined together, makes a resistance to the finger, nearly equal to that of strong hog's bristles. Its legs are serrated in the inside, and the whole covered with brown hair or down. As soon as this plague appears, and their buzzing is heard, all the cattle forsake their food, and run wildly about the plain, till they die, worn out with fatigue, fright, and hunger. No remedy remains, but to leave the black earth, and hasten down to the sands of Atbara; and there they remain, while the rains last, this cruel enemy never daring to pursue them farther.

"Though his size be immense as his strength, and his body covered with a thick skin, defended with strong hair, yet even the camel is not capable to sustain the violent punctures the fly makes with his pointed proboscis. He must lose no time in removing to the sands of Atbara; for when once attacked by this fly, his body, head, and legs break out into large bosses, which swell, break, and putrify, to the certain destruction of the creature. Even the elephant and rhinoceros, who, by reason of their enormous bulk, and the vast quantity of food and water they daily need, cannot shift to desert and dry places, as the season may require, are obliged to roll themselves in mud and mire, which, when dry, coats them over like armor, and enables them to stand their ground against this winged assassin; yet I have found some of these tubercles upon almost every elephant and rhinoceros that I have seen, and attribute

them to this cause. All the inhabitants of the sea-coast of Melinda, down to Cape Gardefan, to Saba, and the south coast to the Red Sea, are obliged to put themselves in motion, and remove to the next sand, in the beginning of the rainy season, to prevent all their stock of cattle from being destroyed. This is not a partial emigration; the inhabitants of all the countries, from the mountains of Abyssinia northward, to the confluence of the Nile, and Astaboras, are once a year obliged to change their abode, and seek protection on the sands of Beja; nor is there any alternative, or means of avoiding this, though a hostile band were in their way, capable of spoiling them of half their substance.

Of all those that have written upon these countries, the prophet Isaiah alone has given an account of this animal, and the manner of its operation, Isaiah vii. 18, 19: And it shall come to pass, in that day, that the Lord shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt; and they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes.'-That is, they shall cut off from the cattle their usual retreat to the desert, by taking possession of those places, and meeting them there, where ordinarily they never come, and which, therefore, were the refuge of the cattle.

'We cannot read the history of the plagues which God brought upon Pharaoh by the hands of Moses, without stopping a moment to consider a singularity, a very principal one, which attended this plague of the fly, Exodus viii. 20, &c. It was not till this time, by means of this insect, that God said, he would separate his people from the Egyptians. And it would seem, that a law was given to them, that fixed the limits of their habitation. It is well known, as I have repeatedly said, that the land of Goshen or Geshen, the possession of the Israelites, was a land of pasture, which was not tilled or sown, because it was not overflowed by the Nile. But the land overflowed by the Nile, was the black earth of the valley of Egypt, and it was here that God confined the flies; for, he says, it shall be a sign of this separation of the people, which he had then made, that not one fly should be seen in the sand, or pastureground, the land of Goshen; and this kind of soil has ever since been the refuge of all cattle, emigrating from the black earth, to the lower part of Atbara. Isaiah, indeed, says, that the fly shall be in all the desert places, and, consequently, the sands; yet this was a particular dispensation of Providence, to a special end, the desolation of Egypt, and was not a repeal of the general law, but a confirmation of it; it was an exception for a particular purpose, and a limited time.

'I have already said so much on this subject, that it would be tiring my reader's patience, to repeat any thing concerning him; I shall, therefore, content myself by giving a very accurate design of him, only observing that, for distinctness sake, I have magnified him something above twice the natural size. He has no sting, though he seems to me to be rather of the bee kind; but his mo

tion is more rapid and sudden than that of the bee, and resembles that of the gad-fly in England. There is something particular in the sound or buzzing of this insect. It is a jarring noise, together with a humming; which induces me to believe it proceeds, at least, in part, from a vibration made with the three hairs at his

snout.

It is a well known fact, that the Egyptians paid a superstitious worship to several sorts of flies and insects; and this, as the learned Bryant has shown, gave a peculiar character to the judgment brought upon them by the plague of flies, since their punishment was inflicted by means of the very things they revered, and which none of the spells or charms of the magicians and priests could in any way propitiate.

Among the ridiculous idols worshipped by the ancient Canaanites, Beel-zebub, the god of flies, appears to have been one, as he had, during the times of the Old Testament history, a famous temple and oracle at Ekron, 2 Kings i. This name was afterwards used by the Jews to signify 'the prince of devils,' Matthew x. 24, &c.

In Hosea iv. 16, we read of Israel sliding back as a blacksliding heifer,' where the original signifies, properly, a cow which has been stung by a gad-fly, or other insect, and refers to those retreats of safety to which the animal betakes itself under such circum

stances.

1

THE HORNET.

THIS voracious and destructive insect was employed by Jehovah for the purpose of driving the enemies of Israel from the land of promise, Exod. xxiii. 38; Deut. vii. 20; Josh. xxiv. 12. Several commentators understand these passages metaphorically, as denot ing the terror of the Lord, or some remarkable disease which he commissioned to lay waste the country before the armies of Israel; from a conception that an insect of this description was altogether inadequate to accomplish such a purpose. But we see no necessity to depart from the literal interpretation of the texts. The hornet, which belongs to the species Crabro, and is of the genus vespa or wasp, is a most voracious insect, and is exceedingly strong for its size, which is generally an inch long, though Dr. Clarke states he has seen some an inch and a half long, and so strong, that having caught one in a small pair of forceps, it repeatedly escaped by using violent contortions, so that at last he was obliged to abandon all hope of securing it alive, which he wished to have done. How distressing and destructive a multitude of these might be, says this eminent writer, any person may conjecture: even the bees of one hive would be sufficient to sting a thousand men to madness; but how much worse must wasps and hornets be! No armor, no weapons, could avail against these. A few thousands of them would be quite sufficient to throw the best disciplined army into confusion and rout.

But instances of whole nations being driven from their countries by insects of different kinds, is attested by many ancient authors; and what is particularly applicable here is, that according to Elian, the Phaselians, a people descended from the Canaanites, and who dwelt about the mountains of Solyma, were driven out of their country by wasps,

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