124 SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY. 



claims that have been advanced in favor of those animals which are 

 supposed to be the reem of the Hebrew Scriptures. Let us first 

 hear Mr. Bruce. 



'It is very remarkable,' says this distinguished traveller, 'that two 

 such animals as the elephant and the rhinoceros should have whol- 

 ly escaped the description of the sacred writers. Moses and the 

 children of Israel were long in the neighborhood of the countries 

 which produced them both, while in Egypt and in Arabia. The 

 classing of the animals into clean and unclean seems to have led 

 the legislator into a kind of necessity of describing, in one of the 

 classes, an animal which made the food of the principal pagan na- 

 tions in the neighborhood. Considering the long and intimate con- 

 nexion Solomon had with the south coast of the Red Sea, it is next 

 to impossible that he was not acquainted with them, as both David 

 his father, and he himself, made plentiful use of ivory, as they fre- 

 quently mention in their writings, which, along with gold, came 

 from the same parts. Solomon, besides, wrote expressly on Zool- 

 ogy, and we can scarce suppose he was ignorant of two of the prin- 

 cipal articles of that part of the creation, inhabitants of the great 

 continent of Asia east from him, and that of Africa on the south, 

 with both which territories he was in constant correspondence. 



' There are two animals named frequently in scripture without 

 naturalists being agreed what they are. The one is the behemoth, 

 the other the reem ; both mentioned as types of strength, courage, 

 and independence on man ; and, as such, exempted from the ordi- 

 nary lot of beasts, to be subdued by him, or reduced under his do- 

 minion. Though this is not to be taken in a literal sense, for there 

 is no animal without the fear or beyond the reach of the power of 

 man, we are to understand it of animals possessed of strength and 

 size so superlative, as that in these qualities other beasts bear no 

 proportion to them.' 



The behemoth Mr. Bruce takes to be the elephant, in which we 

 differ from him; and the reem he argues to be the rhinoceros, from 

 the following considerations. 



The derivation of the word, both in Hebrew and Ethiopic, seems 

 to be from erectness or standing straight. This is certainly no paix 

 ticular quality in the animal itself, who is not more, or even so 

 much erect as many other quadrupeds, for its knees are rather 

 crooked ; but it is from the circumstance and manner in which his 

 horn is placed. The horns of all other animals are inclined to some 

 Degree of parallelism with the nose, or os frontis. The horn of the 

 rhinoceros alone is erect or perpendicular to this bone, on which it 

 stands at right angles ; thereby possessing a greater purchase or 

 power, as a lever, than any horn could possibly have in any other 

 position. 



This situation of the horn is veiy happily alluded to in the sacred 

 writings : * My horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of a reem,' Psalm 

 xcii. 10. And the horn here alluded to is not wholly figurative, but 

 was really an ornament worn by great men in the days of victory. 



