BIRDS OF THE BIBLE 



CHAPTER XV 



Habits op Birds as Described in the Old Testament. 

 Domesticated Birds. Cage Birds and Bird-catching. 

 Canon Tristram on Birds of the Holy Land. Swift, 

 Swallow and Cuckoo. Seers and Prophets on 



' ' Migration." Birds as Sacred Emblems. 



In Genesis the creation of birds is placed after 

 that of fishes and reptiles, and before mammals, 

 a system of classification in strict accordance 

 with the teaching of modern palaeontology ; birds, 

 as Canon Tristram has pointed out, becoming 

 numerous in the Chalk after the reign of the 

 greatest monsters of the Wealden. 



In the Old Testament interesting allusions are 

 made to the habits of birds, and many sidelights 

 are thrown upon the relation of man to the 

 feathered races at a period long anterior to the 

 birth of Christ. It would appear that before the 

 Captivity, the Jews had no domestic fowls, except 

 pigeons, a species which lent itself so readily to 

 a kind of semi-domestication that it may easily 

 claim to be the first of the avian races to fall 

 under the dominion of man. Professor Lepsius, 

 indeed, has stated that there are definite records 

 of pigeons being kept in the fifth Eg5rptian 

 dynasty about 3,000 B.C. 



Still, apart from domestic poultry, it is clear 

 that even in Job's time the caging of song-birds 

 was a well-established custom, that birds were 

 recognised ladies' pets, and that in the cases of 



157 



