144 TRAVELS IN UPPER 



discovered in the family of the jerb©. But the first 

 result which I have obtained from an attentive ex- 

 amination, and accurate descriptions of several of 

 those animals, has ascertained to me, that there 

 existed but one variety of them in Egypt, where 

 they are multiplied without end. In fact, among 

 all those which 1 have oi^erved at different times 

 and in different places, I never remarked the least 

 dissimilitude of either torm or colour. 



For the facility of pronunciation, I shall dis- 

 tinguish this gerboise of Egypt, by the name of 

 jerbo, under which Buffon has given a description 

 of it *, though its real name, its Arabic name, be 

 jerboa. It is a mistake in Hassclquitz, which Bruce 

 has likewise corrected^, to say that the Arabs call 

 it garbuka \. 



That travellers, unacquainted with natural his- 

 tory, and consequently without taste for observa- 



* Natural History of Quadrupeds, art. Gerboise. — Lepus 

 cauddelongata, Lin. Syst. Nat. edit. 9. Mus jaculus, ibid. edit. 12. 

 Dipus jaculus, ibid. edit. 13. — Mus jaculus Jiedibus posticis longissi- 

 mis, cauda extretni villas a. Hasseiquitz, Travels in Palestine, 

 vol. ii. p. 6, and Mem. of the Acad, of Upsal, 1750, p. 17.— 

 Gerbo. Cornelius Le Bruyn's Travels, p. 406. — Gerboise. Paul 

 Lucas, Travels, vol. ii. p. 73. — Jerboa. Shaw's Voyage, p. 248. 

 — The two-footed mouse of the mountains, called by the Ara- 

 bians jerbo. Michaelis, quest. 92, &c. &c. 



f Travels in Nubia and Abyssinia, vol. v. is;i, 



% Hasselquitz, in the place above quoted. 



tions 



