takes of the character of the animals and plants of Southern Europe, with a slight admixture of Egyptian immigrants. The gulls and petrels which skim the shores are the same as those which dash down the Bosphorus, or dip in the harbour of Alexandria; the same birds of prey descend from the hills as sweep the inlets of Smyrna, or earn a scanty subsistence among the hungry isles of Greece. The Russian winters dismiss from inhospitable steppes almost the same species by divergent routes to the west and the east of the Mediterranean, while returning spring tempts but few warblers from the scorching south, whom a spirit of adventure does not induce to ramble still farther towards the north.

But as soon as we have crossed the Mediterranean watershed, we encounter birds of a widely different type, with no relationship to those of Europe. To understand the cause of this, we must recollect, that the two great mountain ranges of Central Syria, the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon (or Hermon), do not terminate, as a cursory inspection of our maps might lead us to suppose, at the northern frontiers of the Holy Land. They project themselves far southwards, though at a less elevation, running in two parallel ranges, separated from each other by the deep chasm of the Jordan valley, until the western range, after forming by its broken and irregular spur the hill country of Galilee, then gathers more compactly into the mountains of Ephraim and Benjamin, is spread out into the hill country of Judæa, and, finally, is lost and expanded into that high table-land of Western Arabia Petræa, which forms the watershed of the Wady el Arish (sometimes marked in our maps as the river of Egypt), and is abruptly brought to a point at the bifurcation of the Red Sea.

Broken more or less throughout its whole course, this continuation of the Lebanon is the inheritance of the ten tribes and a half, the platform on which the great historical cities of Palestine rest, and divides the watersheds of the Mediterranean and of the Dead Sea valley. The eastern range of Syria, after culminating in snow-clad Hermon, at a height of nearly 10,000 feet, runs southward with much less irregularity until it terminates at the head of the Gulf of Akabah, the ancient Eziongeber. In its course it is known as the table-land of

Bashan, the mountains of Gilead and Ajalon, the hills of Moab, and Edom or Idumæa, the modern Petra. This range, like the western, forms the separation of a watershed through its whole length, the westward face draining into the Jordan, the Dead Sea, and the Arabah, while the eastern watershed fertilizes the vast plains of Bashan, Moab, Midian, and the Ammonites (the modern Belka and the Hauran), its streams being finally lost in sand, salt lakes, or marshes, in the Arabian desert. None of its drainage reaches the Red Sea, or the Euphrates.

Now, this desert expanse, like the Sahara of North Africa, forms a barrier against the distribution of eastern and southern birds and animals, more impassable than an area of sea, of even equal extent. As it is the Sahara, and not the Mediterranean which separates the natural history of Europe from that of Africa, so it seems to be the Arabian deserts, and not the Persian or Red Sea gulfs, which check the spread of the Indian and Abyssinian fauna. Were it not for one unique and unparalleled phenomenon in its physical geography, we should find the ornithology of the Holy Land similar to that of Barbary or Spain, but with some few stragglers from Eastern Africa, whose arrival had been facilitated by the lay of the Red Sea, and with a still more scanty number of stragglers across the eastern desert from the Euphrates valley.

But the existence of the Jordan valley disturbs these proportions. The little district of Palestine is rent by this long chasm, 1400 feet below the level of the sea, enclosing tracts, some arid and salt, others fertile and well watered, but all enjoying, in the temperate zone, the climate of the tropics, and wholly distinct from the country on either side. These tracts, or oases, nurture birds of tropical type, different from those of the upper country. But there appears to be no difference between the birds on either side of this isolated strip of the tropics. The same birds, the wood-pigeons, jays, and woodpeckers of Carmel, equally abound in the forests of Gilead and Bashan, and we obtained no birds there which did not also occur on the western side.

Of the 322 species of birds we obtained, 26 are, so far as our present knowledge extends, peculiar to Palestine and the districts immediately adjacent; 8 are of Eastern

Asia; 32 are common to Arabia or East Africa, being chiefly desert forms; while 260 are reckoned in the lists of European birds, and no less than 172 are enumerated in the catalogues of British birds.

BIRDS OF PREY.-We will consider first the birds of prey, which naturally claim precedence. Of these, forty-three species rewarded our researches during one year, and they certainly form the prominent feature in the ornithological landscape. Over the deep valley of the Jordan kestrels hover and kites and short-toed eagles soar throughout the year; harriers and buzzards perpetually sweep across the marshes and maritime plains; the traveller can never mount a hill without being watched by parties of griffons and eagles circling far above him. The griffons are far more numerous than in any other country I have visited, while the larger species of eagles are certainly not less abundant than in the best stocked wildernesses of Algeria and Tunis.

Unobservant as Orientals proverbially are of the nicer distinctions of the animals and birds around them, yet the native vocabulary for the raptorial birds is much richer than for any other class. The Arabs distinguish three species of vultures. They have five names for the falcons, three for the eagles, two for the kites. They recognise both species of kestrel, and the sparrow hawk, and have a distinct appellation for the harriers, while they distinguish the Egyptian eagle-owl, the white, little, and scops owls.

Incidentally as natural history is mentioned in Holy Scripture, yet even there we have fifteen distinct Hebrew names for the birds of prey, several of which are at once recognisable in the vernacular Arabic of the country.

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We shall give these, and their rendering in the authorized version, and then consider each term separately. They are, (1) 'ayit, fowls; (2) peres, ossifrage;' (3) nesher, eagle; (4) racham, 'gier-eagle;' (5) dayah, vulture;' (6) 'asniyah, osprey;' (7) raah, glede; (8) ayah, 'kite;' (9) netz, 'hawk; (10) tachmás, nighthawk;' (11) bath-haya'anah, 'owl;' (12) yanshooph, 'owl;' (13) cós, great owl; ' (14) kippóz, 'little owl;' (15) lilith, screech owl.'

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(1) 'Ayit, 'FowLS,' from a root signifying to attack

vehemently,' is a collective term, applied exclusively to raptorial birds. It occurs three times: "When the fowls ('ayit) came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away (Gen. xv. 11). "There is a path which no fowl ('ayit) knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen (Job xxviii. 7). The fowls shall summer upon them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them" (Isa. xviii. 6).

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In each of these passages we have a familiar characteristic of all birds of prey referred to. In the passage from Isaiah, the prophet foretells that the Ethiopian enemies of his people shall be left desolate for the fowls to summer on, in allusion to the well-known predilection of all these birds for a bare and dead tree on which to perch. No eagle or large hawk will settle on a green tree, if a dead stump or bare pole is in the neighbourhood; and the fowlers, when wishing to obtain hawks, take advantage of this habit by fixing their traps on the top of a dead tree, or by erecting a tall pole with a trap on the top of it, when it is certain to be selected by the first falcon in want of a perch.

In the two passages first quoted, reference is made to two very remarkable characteristics of the vultures and larger eagles, their habit of congregating in large numbers over a carcase, and their wonderful power of distant vision. These birds detect their food by sight, not by scent. If an animal falls at night, it is not attacked till daylight, unless by the jackals and hyænas; but if it be slaughtered after sunrise, though the human eye may scan the firmament for a vulture in vain, within five minutes a speck will appear overhead, and, wheeling and circling. in a rapid downward flight, a huge griffon will pounce on the carcase. In a few minutes a second and a third will dart down; another and another follows-griffons, Egyptian vultures, eagles, kites, buzzards, and ravens, till the air is darkened by the crowd. Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together."

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"There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen;" and yet the vulture can detect the path of a wounded deer from a height where it can itself be descried by no human eye. The process is probably this: The griffon-vulture, who first detects the quarry, descends from his elevation at once. Another, sweeping the horizon at a still greater

distance, observes his neighbour's movements, and follows his course. A third, still farther removed, follows the flight of the second; he is traced by another, and thus a perpetual succession is kept up, so long as a morsel of flesh remains over which to consort. Thus, on great battle fields, and during sieges, as at that of Sebastopol, immense numbers of vultures were congregated in a few hours, where the bird was comparatively scarce before. During the Crimean war, the whole race from the Caucasus and Asia Minor seemed to have collected to enjoy so unwonted an abundance. The Arabs of North Africa declare, that at that time very few Nissr' were seen in their accustomed haunts, and believe that they were all gathered, even from the Atlas, to feed on Russian horses.

(2.) Peres, 'OSSIFRAGE' (Lev. xi. 13; Deut. xiv. 12).The bird here denoted is the Lämmer-Geier, or Bearded