OESTRUS. 
371. 
of cattle by conducting them into the sands be- 
yond the limits of the black earth, and bringing, 
them back again when the danger from the insect 
was over.” 
. 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. It was not till this time, 
and by means of this insect, that God said, he 
would separate his people from the Egyptians. 
And it would seem that then 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 pasture ground, 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 parti- 
cular dispensation of providence, to answer a spe- 
cial end, the desolation of Egypt, and was not a 
repeal of the general law, but a confirmation of 
