WILD ANIMALS. 393 



or being made lawful ; a ceremony which is performed by 

 cutting the throat with the neck turned towards the Holy 

 City. Forskal mentions several wild animals of which he 

 knew nothing except what he learned from the indistinct ac- 

 counts of the natives. The jcear was said to resemble the 

 the ass in shape and size, and the flesh is reckoned excellent 

 food. The bakar wash, from the vague descriptions given by 

 the Arabs, seemed to be the wild ox. They mentioned an- 

 other quadruped of a similar form, which was without horns, 

 and fed only by night. One of the most singular of these 

 anonymous animals was described as resembling a cat, which 

 fed on grass, and was eaten as a great delicacy. The Be- 

 douins of Sinai frequently mentioned to Burckhardt a beast 

 of prey called wober, which inhabited only the retired parts 

 of the desert ; they represented it as being about the size of 

 a large dog, with a head hke a hog. He was told of another 

 voracious creature called shyb, stated to be a breed between 

 the leopard and the wolf, but their accounts as to this origin 

 are not much to be trusted, their common practice being to 

 assign parents of different known species to any animal which 

 they seldom meet with. The jerboa or Pharaoh's rat is 

 seldom to be found in great numbers in the sandy tracts 

 among the hills, and on the banks of the Euphrates. Its 

 appearance and manners have already been noticed in the 

 Zoology of Abyssinia and Egypt. Its size is that of a large 

 rat ; the upper part is of a light-fawn colour, striped with 

 black ; and this dusky hue contrasts agreeably with the fine 

 shining white of the belly. The body is short, — broader 

 behind than before, and well provided with long, soft, silky 

 hair. According to Hasselquist, the tail is three times longer 

 than the whole body ; Sonnini says he never found it much 

 more than half its length. Its thickness hardly exceeds the 

 circumference of a large goose-quill ; but it is of a quadran- 

 gular, and not of a round shape. The fore-legs, which have 

 five toes, are white and short, scarcely extending beyond 

 the hair ; but they are less serviceable in walking than in 

 conveying food to the animal's mouth, or digging his subter- 

 ranean habitation ; hence the name dipus or two-footed 

 mouse, erroneously applied to the jerboa. The hind-legs are 

 covered with white and fawn-coloured hair ; but its long feet 

 are almost entirely naked. Its motion, especially when pur- 

 sued, is that of leapmg and bounding like the kangaroo which 



