224- SYRIAN HYRAX. 



these, a titmouse, seemed to be advancing in a 

 sort of familiarity with him, though I never saw 

 it venture to perch upon him : yet it would eat 

 frequently, and, at the same time, of the food 

 upon which the Ashkoko was feeding; and in 

 this consisted chiefly the familiarity I speak of, 

 for the Ashkoko himself never shewed any altera- 

 tion of behaviour upon the presence of the bird, 

 but treated it with a kind of absolute indifference. 

 The cage indeed was large, and the birds having 

 a perch to sit upon in the upper part of it, they 

 did not annoy one another. 



" In Amhara this animal is called Ashkoko, 

 which I apprehend is derived from the singularity 

 of those long herinaceous hairs, which, like small 

 thorns, grow about his back, and which in Am- 

 hara are called Ashok. In Arabia and Syria he is 

 called Israel's Sheep, or Gannim Israel, for what 

 reason I know not, unless it is chiefly from his 

 frequenting the rocks of Horeb and Sinai, where 

 the children of Israel made their forty years' 

 peregrination ; perhaps this name obtains only 

 among the Arabians. I apprehend he is known 

 by that of Saphan in the Hebrew, and is the ani- 

 mal erroneously called by our translators Cuni- 

 culus, the rabbet or coney. " 



