264 On the Physical Facts contained in the Bible, 
noise on their mother, who finds her greatest delight in sup- 
plying them with food. 
It indicates to us, in like manner, the time of gestation 
and delivery of the hinds and wild goats. These animals are 
represented as bowing themselves when they bring forth, 
and uttering sorrowful cries. The wild ass is spoken of as 
being singularly fierce, incapable of being subdued, and 
answering not to the voice of him who calls himself its mas- 
ter; free, and ranging the mountains as his pasture ; his 
abode is in solitude, and his retreat the desert. 
Man, it tells us, cannot subdue the oryx ; he cannot force 
it to remain even for a single night in a stable ; still less can 
he make it submit to the yoke, to open the furrows and har- 
row the fertile valleys. Notwithstanding his power, the 
strength of man is incapable of making this untameable ani- 
mal assist him in his labours. He cannot make use of it to 
carry his harvests, or to gather them into his barns.* 
The delineations of the manners of these animals are ex- 
tremely true, and are expressed with remarkable conciseness. 
Such is the case with those the Bible gives us respecting the 
habits of the ostrich, a bird which it represents as void of 
affection for its young, which are in its eyes as if they 
were not its own. Forgetting her offspring, the ostrich 
* See Job xxxix. 1 to 11. We shall make only a single observation 
on these verses: it relates to the animal which the Hebrews called Reem, 
perhaps the oryx of the Greeks, spoken of by Martial and Oppian. This 
species appears to be the same as the Oryx antilope of naturalists ; it is 
about the size of a stag, and its horns are slender, from two to three feet 
long. This antelope, or oryx of Elian, lives in large herds in the interior 
of Africa, and throughout the whole of Arabia. 
M. Rosenmuller, as well as Bochart, has translated the Hebrew term 
Reem by oryx, with so much the more reason, because the notion of the 
unicorn has been formed from some individuals which had lost one of 
their horns. This circumstance is the more probable, since the oryx 
presents this peculiarity, as well as the algazel and leucoryx antelopes : 
all of these animals frequently become unicorn. 
However this may be, the details which Scripture gives us respect- 
ing the animal which it calls Reem, agree perfectly with the Oryx anti- 
lope. See our Observations on the Unicorn of the ancients (Mem. de la 
Soctété Linn, de Bordeaux, ) 
