96 SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY. 



even than the dog, and more voracious than the wolf; though it 

 never goes alone, but always in a pack of forty or fifty together. 

 They are very little afraid of mankind, but pursue their game to the 

 very doors, without testifying either attachment or apprehension. 

 They enter insolently into the sheep-folds, the yards, and the 

 stables, and, when they can find nothing else, devour the leather 

 harness, boots, and shoes, and run off with what they have not 

 time to swallow. They not only attack the living, but the dead ; 

 scratching up with their feet the new-made graves, and devouring 

 the corpse. They always assist each other as well in this employ- 

 ment of exhumation, as in that of the chase ; and while at their 

 dreary work, exhort each other by a most mournful cry, resembling 

 that of children under chastisement. Like all other savage animals, 

 when they have once tasted human flesh, they can never after re- 

 frain from pursuing mankind. They watch the burying grounds, 

 follow armies, and keep in the rear of caravans. 



Jackals seldom appear abroad till night-fall. Having scented 

 the prey, they sally iorth in troops of thirty or forty in number, and 

 pursue it the whole night with unceasing assiduity, keeping up a 

 horrid howl, and, with great perseverance, at last drive down their 

 victim. The lion, the tiger, and the panther, whose appetites are 

 superior to their swiftness, attend to the jackal's cry, and just at the 

 moment it supposes itself going to share the fruits of its labor, one 

 of these animals comes in, satiates himself upon the spoil, and 

 his poor provider must be content with the bare carcass he leaves 

 behind* From eastern travellers we l.;arn, that the jackal feeds upon 

 roots and fruit, as well as upon animal flesh, and that it frequently 

 roots up plants to satisfy its appetite. 



Such is the character which naturalists have furnished of the 

 jackal, or Egyptian fox : let MS see what references are made to it 

 in scripture. To its carnivorous habits there is an allusion in 

 Psalm Ixiii. 9, 10 : * Those that seek my soul, to destroy it, shall go 

 into the lower parts of the earth : they shall fall by the sword ; they 

 shall be a portion for foxes;' arid to its ravages in the vineyard, 

 Solomon alludes in Cant. ii. 15: 'Take us the foxes, the little foxes, 

 that spoil the vines: tor our vines have tender grapes.' The mean- 

 ing is, that false teachers corrupt the purity of doctrine, obscure the 

 simplicity of worship, overturn the beauty of appointed order, 

 break the unity of believers, and extinguish the liie and vigor of 

 Christian practice. These words of Ezekiel may he understood in 

 the same sense : * O Jerusalem ! thy prophets, (or. as the context 

 gires the sense,) thy flattering teachers, are as foxes in the deserts,* 

 chap. xiii. 4. This name they receive, because, with vulpine sub- 

 tilty. they speak ties in hypocrisy. Such teachers the apostle calls 

 1 wolves in sheep's clothing ;' deceitful workers, who, by their cun- 

 ning, subvert whole houses ; and whose word, like the touth of a 

 fox upon the vine, eats as a canker. 



On a particular occasion, our Lord speaking of Herod, who had 

 threatened to kill him, applied to him, metaphorically, the name 



