THE DELUGE OF NOAH 145 



by habit a wanderer, and remarkable for power of 

 flight and clearness of distant vision. So long, there- 

 fore, as it made the ark its headquarters, * going and 

 returning ' l from its search for food, it might be 

 inferred that no habitable land was accessible. The 

 dove, sent out immediately after the raven, 2 is of a 

 different habit. It could not act as a scavenger of 

 the waters and go and return, but could leave only if 

 it found land covered with vegetation. As a domesti- 

 cated bird also, it would naturally come back to be 

 taken into the ark. Hence it was sent forth at 

 intervals of seven days, returning with an olive leaf 

 when it found tree tops above the water, and remain- 

 ing away when it found food and shelter. The 

 Chaldean account adds a third bird, the swallow a 

 perfectly useless addition, since this bird, if taken into 

 the ark at all, would from its habits of life be incapable 

 of affording any information. This addition is a 

 mark of interpolation in the Chaldean version, and 

 proceeded perhaps from the sacred character attached 

 by popular superstition to the swallow, or from the 

 familiar habits of the bird suggesting to some later 

 editor its appropriateness. Singularly enough, the 

 usually judicious Schrader, probably from deficient 

 knowledge of the habits of birds, fails to appreciate 

 all this, and after a long discussion prefers the 



1 Margin of Authorised Version; less fully, * to and fro 'in the 

 text. 



2 There is no reason to suppose, as some have done, a hiatus here 

 in the narrative. 



K 



