INTRODUCTION. 15 



offerings, whicli were eaten in that city. It is 

 not disputed that such a regulation existed, 

 but we know that it was, on some account or 

 other, dispensed with or not enforced. For 

 Lightfoot and others have shown that cocks 

 were actually kept at Jerusalem as in other 

 places, and instance the story in the Jerusalem 

 Talmud of a cock which was stoned by the 

 sentence of the council for having killed a 

 little child." That the pigeon was now do- 

 mesticated, or rather reconciled to breed in 

 dove-cotes, there can be little doubt, but great 

 numbers, in a still wilder condition, tenanted 

 the ledges and holes in the rocks, as they 

 tenant the towers of old ruins, the steeples of 

 abbeys and churches, and the cliffs along the 

 coast of our island. The demand for the 

 young of this bird, as offerings in the temple, 

 was extremely great, till at length they were 

 publicly sold within the walls of the sacred 

 edifice. 



The swan, and evidently the wild swan, is 

 mentioned in the Levitical code, among the 

 unclean meats ; but though the Divinely di- 

 rected legislator must have been well ac- 

 quainted with the goose and duck, birds kept, 

 as we have said, in great abundance in Egypt, 



