102 SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY. 



'He appeared to me to be about ten or twelve hands high ; the 

 skin smooth, like a deer's, and of a reddish color ; the belly and 

 hinder parts partaking of a silvery grey; his neck was finer than 

 that of a common ass, being longer, and bending like a stag's, and 

 his legs beautifully slender; the head and ears seemed large in 

 proportion to the gracefulness of these forms, and by them I first 

 recognised that the object of my chase was of the ass tribe. The 

 mane was short and black, as was also a tuft which terminated his 

 tail. No Ijne whatever ran along his back, or crossed his shoulders, 

 as are seen on the tame species with us. When my followers of 

 the country came up, they regretted I had not shot the creature 

 when he was so within my aim, telling me his flesh is one of the 

 greatest delicacies in Persia: but it would riot have been to eat 

 him that I should have been glad to have had him in my posses- 

 sion. The prodigious swiftness and peculiar manner with which 

 he fled across the plain, coincided exactly with the description that 

 Xenophon gives of the same animal in Arabia. But, above all, it 

 reminded me of the striking portrait drawn by the author of the 

 book of Job. 1 



Let this account be compared with the description in Job : 

 chap, xxxix. 



The fact, that the wild ass delights in the most barren and arid 

 regions, shows the propriety of a passage in Isaiah, where the ex- 

 treme desolation of the land of Israel to be occasioned by the troops 

 of Nebuchadnezzar, is foretold : ch. xxxii. 13, 14. 



Professor Gmelin states, that a female onager he possessed some- 

 times went two days without drinking, and that brackish water wfcs 

 better liked by her than fresh. A few blades of corn, a little with- 

 ered grass, or the tops of a few scorched shrubs or plants, were 

 sufficient to satisfy the cravings of its appetite, aud render it con- 

 tented and happy. Hence we may conceive the extreme state of 

 wretchedness to which Judah was exposed, by the dearth which 

 Jeremiah describes in the fourteenth chapter of his prophecies : 



The wild asses stood in the high places, 

 They snuffed up the wind Hke dragons ; 

 Their eyes failed, because there was no grass. Ver. 6. 



The extreme propensity of the Jews to associate themselves in 

 acts of idolatrous and obscene worship, with the heathen nations by 

 which they were surrounded, has induced the prophet to refer to 

 the violence of lust, and unrestrainable eagerness to satisfy the 

 prompting of desire, in this animal : 'How canst thou say I am not 

 polluted, I have not gone after Baalim? See thy way in the val- 

 ley, know what thou hast done ; thou art a swift dromedary, trav- 

 ersing her ways ; a wild ass used to the wilderness, that snuffeth up 

 the wind at her pleasure : in her occasion who can turn her away ? 

 All they that seek her will not weary themselves; after her season 

 they will find her,' ch. ii. 23, 24. Every means used to restrain 

 them from their idolatrous purposes proved unavailing: they 



