Vulture, the largest and most magnificent of the Vulture tribe (Gypaëtus barbatus), and the Hebrew word, meaning the breaker,' is well expressed by the Latin 'Ossifrage,' or bone-breaker.' Marrow bones and tortoises are its favourite delicacies; but huge as is its size (four and a half feet in length), its claws and bill are comparatively weak, and it is only by carrying its prize to a great height, and then dropping it repeatedly, that it is able to reach the dainty morsel within. It is not a common bird in the Holy Land, and is not gregarious; but most of the ravines are peopled by-a pair, and one or two may be observed in every day's journey. The Lämmer-Geier may he seen floating slowly at a uniform level, close to the cliffs of some deep gorge, like the Jabbok, where his shadow is cast on the wall-like rocks. If the ravine has sharp angles, he does not cut across from point to point, but preserves the same distance from the cliffs.

When the other vultures have picked the flesh off any animal, he comes in at the end of the feast, and swallows the bones, or breaks them and swallows the pieces, if he cannot otherwise extract the marrow. The bones he cracks by letting them fall on a rock from a great height. He does not, however, confine himself to these delicacies, but, whenever he has an opportunity, will devour lambs, kids, or hares. These he generally obtains by pushing them over cliffs when he has watched his opportunity, and he has been known to attack men while climbing rocks, and dash them against the bottom But tortoises and serpents are its ordinary food.

I have repeatedly watched a pair of Lämmer-Geiers, who had an eyrie close to our camp, pass and repass in front of our tents for hours at a time, invariably dropping something upon a smooth ledge of rock hard by. For several days we imagined that these were sticks they were carrying to their nest; for prompt as we were in endeavouring to be first at the spot, the birds swooped down like lightning and seized their quarry again. At length we caught a serpent, writhing and dislocated, which we had taken for a stick, and found that our imagined stones were tortoises, which had to be dropped perhaps a dozen times before the shell was sufficiently shattered. No doubt it was a Lämmer-Geier that mistook the bald head of the poet Eschylus for a stone, and dropped on it the tortoise which killed him.

The adult Lämmer-Geier is a beautiful bird, with its black beard, tawny under plumage, blood-red eyes, and finely pencilled upper plumage. Its flight is very graceful, especially when, in turning a corner, it slightly bends its long wedge-shaped tail, gently draws in one wing, and as gently expands it again. The young bird is sooty black, and by no means prepossessing in appearance. It does not attain its mature plumage for two years. The Lämmer-Geier is found in all the mountainous districts of Southern Europe, Africa, and Asia, south of the Altai Range, to which it does not extend,* and breeds in the most inaccessible cliffs, laying only one egg in the middle of winter, of an orange or pink colour, which is hatched generally in February. The young leave the nest in April or May. The nest is an enormous structure, a cartload of branches interwoven, supporting a solid bed of sods and moss.

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(3.) Nesher, EAGLE.-Invariably so translated in the many passages in which the word occurs. There can be no doubt of the identity of the Hebrew 'nesher' with the Arabic missr,' the name invariably applied not to any eagle, strictly so called, but to the Griffon (Gyps fulvus) of naturalists, commonly known as the Griffonvulture, or Great Vulture. It is unfortunate that in our language we have but one word, 'vulture,' applied alike to the noble Griffon, and to the very useful, but very despicable scavenger, Pharaoh's Hen,' as Europeans in the East call the Egyptian Vulture. Though the Griffon be a carrion feeder, it is neither more nor less so than all eagles, none of which will kill their prey, if they can find it ready slain to their hand.

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We shall see, as we examine some of the passages where the nesher is spoken of, that the description is applicable to the Griffon alone; and so far from the Griffon-vulture conveying the idea of a repulsive bird to the Oriental mind, it has been universally adopted as the type of the lordly and noble. Nisroch, or the eagle-headed god of the Assyrian sculptures, and of 2 Kings xix. 37, Isa. xxxvii. 38, was the deification of the Vissr or Eagle; the standard of the Assyrian armies, alluded to in Hab. i. 8, "They shall fly as

The late Mr. Atkinson assured me that it did not extend so far north as the Altai Range, properly so called but only to the next range southwards.

the eagle (nesher) that hasteth to eat." "Nesher" may have been used of the larger eagles and vultures indifferently.

In Micah (ch. i. 16) we read, " Make thee bald, and poll thee for thy delicate children; enlarge thy baldness as the eagle" (nesher), where the similitude can

only be taken from the Griffon-vulture, which has the neck and head bald and covered with down, a character which no eagle shares with it. To explain the passage of the Eagle at the time of moulting, as some commentators have done, is to destroy the force of the allusion, which is to the custom of shaving the head as a token of mourning. The Hebrew word sig

nifies to make bald the back part of the head,' very applicable to the back of the head and neck of the Griffon, destitute of true feathers.

The word nesher is derived from a root signifying 'to tear with the beak,' most appropriate to the furious vehemence with which this bird rips up the carcase on which it pounces.

Constant reference is made in Scripture to its feeding on the slain, and on dead flesh. Although this is a habit it shares with the Eagle, yet no eagles congregate like the Griffon; and while the latter may be seen by hundreds, the less conspicuous eagles are only to be counted by a few individuals here and there. Her young ones also suck up blood: and where the slain are, there is she" (Job xxxix. 30). "The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it" (Prov. xxx. 17). "Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together" (Matt. xxiv. 28), where the term may be taken generically.

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In Isa. xlvi. 11, Cyrus is compared to this bird, which was the emblem and standard of Persia. Calling a ravenous bird from the East." And from Assyria and Persia the Romans probably borrowed the ensign which has been adopted by so many modern nations, with more appropriateness of character than its bearers would be willing to acknowledge.

The longevity, strength, swiftness, powers of sight inaccessible nesting places, and affection for its young, are all alluded to in Scripture. "Thy youth is renewed like the eagle's" (Ps. ciii. 5), where there is no necessity to suggest any reference to the moulting of the Eagle or Griffon, which it shares in common with all the feathered ace, but simply to the great age to which, it is well known, all this class attain, paraphrasing the expression, Thy youth is renewed, so that in point of strength thou art like the eagle." It is said that in confinement an Eagle has been known to live upwards of 100 years. One was kept at Vienna for 104 years.

Its strength is noticed in various prophetical writings. "A great eagle, with great wings, longwinged, full of feathers, which had divers colours, came unto Lebanon,

*If the story of the Phoenix were in existence so long back, this might refer to it.

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and took the highest branch of the cedar" (Ez. xvii. 3). They shall mount up with wings, as eagles” (Isa. xl. 31). The strength of the Griffon is best seen when it rushes past the spectator on some mountain side, beating the air with the strokes of its wings, while its long pinion feathers bend and curl under its weight, as it wheels in rapid circles till lost to sight overhead. Its swiftness is frequently noticed. "My days are passed away, as the eagle that hasteth to the prey" (Job ix. 26). "The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth" (Deut. xxviii. 49), was the warning of Moses to Israel, fulfilled when the Chaldæans came "as the eagle that hasteth to eat" (Hab. i. 8). He shall come as an eagle against the house of the Lord" (Hos. viii. 1). "Our persecutors (the Chaldæans) are swifter than the eagles of the heaven," exclaims Jeremiah, witnessing the ravages of their armies (Lam. iv. 19). So in the dirge over Saul and Jonathan, they are said to have been "swifter than eagles" (2 Sam. i. 23).

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So, too, with its power of flight is combined the acuteness of sight already referred to. Job accurately describes the habits of the Griffon. "Doth the eagle (nesher) mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high? She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of the rock, and the strong place. From thence she seeketh the prey, and her eyes behold afar off. Her young ones also suck up blood: and where the slain are, there is she" (ch. xxxix. 27-30).

So the fastnesses of Edom, amid the gorges of Petra, are described by Jeremiah as no security against the vengeance of Jehovah. "O thou that dwellest, in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill: though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle (nesher), I will bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord" (ch. xlix. 16). While the eagles and other birds are content with lower elevations, and sometimes even with trees, the Griffon alone selects the stupendous gorges of Arabia Petræa, and of the defiles of Palestine, and there in great communities rears its young, where the most intrepid climber can only with ropes and other appliances reach its nest.

The Eagle (nesher), as emblematic of divine attributes, is one of the four living creatures in the vision of Eze