10 OUR DOMESTIC TOWLS. 



■while its main design is to show us man's 

 origin and fall, the spread of our race, and 

 the separation of the Israelites from other 

 nations as a peculiar people, the earlier por- 

 tion of the Old Testament clearly informs us ; 

 nor could tliis information, so interesting to 

 the naturalist, be gained from any other source, 

 — not even from the sculptured remains of 

 the Egyptians. 



But while our attention is called to the 

 domestic quadrupeds, sheep, goats, oxen, dogs, 

 camels, asses, and horses, at a more or less 

 remote period, it may appear somewhat strange 

 at first, that we find no distinct allusion to 

 any domestic creatures of the feathered race, 

 though at a distant date, as paintings abund- 

 antly prove, numbers of geese and ducks were 

 kept by the Egyptians, who esteemed their 

 flesh as food.* Perhaps the pigeon may be 

 excepted. We read of a turtle-dove, and 

 "young pigeon" as being sacrificed by Abraham 

 in Gen. xv. 9, and we read in the Levitical law, 

 that, instead of a lamb, the poor were permitted 

 to bring as an ofi"ering " two turtle-doves or 



• Herodotus observes that the Egyptians eat quails, ducks, 

 and small birds, without cooking them, having first put them 

 in salt. 



