380 COLONEL SYKES'S REASONING. [CHAP. x. 



tons burden of a trading vessel in Pliny's days, how 

 many Quails would it take to load it to the sinking 

 point ? 



Colonel Sykes proceeds to adduce modern naturalists 

 and travellers as witnesses to the prodigious numbers of 

 these birds that are captured, one hundred thousand 

 being, on one occasion, taken in one day, and judiciously 

 adds, " With these facts before us, considering the 

 positive testimony of the Psalmist that the unexpected 

 supply of food to the Israelites was a bird, and that 

 bird agreeably to the Septuagint and Josephus a Quail, 

 that only one species of Quail migrates in prodigious 

 numbers, and that species the subject of the present 

 notice, we are authorized to pronounce the Coturnix 

 dactylisonans to be the identical species with which 

 the Israelites were fed. We have here proof of the 

 perpetuation of an instinct through 3300 years, not 

 pervading a whole species, but that part of a species 

 existing within certain geographical limits ; an instinct 

 characterised by a peculiarity which modern observers 

 have also noticed, of making their migratory flight by 

 night: 'at even the Quails came up.' As might be ex- 

 pected, we see the most ancient of all historical works 

 and natural history reflecting attesting lights on each 

 other." 



Here is a small fragment out of infinity brought be- 

 fore our view, a minute portion from eternity, a 

 mere touch of Omnipotence ! A thousand years are as 

 one day ; the same now with us, as with the Israelites 

 of yore ; and the same onwards, till any new order of 

 nature shall be called forth by special intervention. 

 " He rained flesh upon them as thick as dust : and 

 feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea. He let it 



