Conies. 77 



to considerable controversy, but, as we have said, 

 there is no doubt that the Hyrax is the animal 

 intended, and there is equally no doubt that it does 

 not chew the cud. With regard to the first two 

 passages in which it is said to chew the cud, Canon 

 Tristram, who observed it in Palestine, writes as 

 follows : <e It is quite sufficient to watch the 

 creature working and moving its jaw, as it sits in 

 a chink of the rocks, to understand how any one 

 writing as an ordinary observer, and not as a com- 

 parative anatomist, would naturally thus speak of 

 it, and this apart from the question whether the 

 Hebrew word signifies anything more than ( re- 

 chew/ " The same authority adds that "the stony 

 rocks are a refuge for the conies, and tolerably 

 secure they are in such rocks. No animal ever 

 gave us so much trouble to secure. They are far 

 too wary to be taken in traps, and the only chance 

 of securing one is to be concealed patiently about 

 sunset or before sunrise on some overhanging cliff, 

 taking care not to let the shadow be cast below, 

 and then to wait till the little creatures cautiously 

 peep forth from their holes." Bruce, who recog- 

 nised the Hyrax as the ' ( animal erroneously called 

 by our translators cuniculus, the rabbit or coney," 

 says of it that ' ' in Arabia and Syria he is called 

 Israel's sheep, or Grannim Israel, for what reason 

 I know not, unless it be chiefly from his fre- 

 quenting the rocks of Horeb and Sinai, where the 

 children of Israel made their forty years' pere- 

 grination/' He kept one of these animals in con- 



