1 54 TRAVELS Itf UPPER 



lamb of Israel. So far from having the singular 

 and very distinctive character of the jerbo, namely, 

 the excessive length of the hinder legs, this daman 

 has all his legs equal, or nearly so, and he has no 

 tail, whereas that of the jerbo is very long. Dr. 

 Shaw * was the first who fell into the mistake of 

 confounding two animals so very unlike ; and this 

 error was successively copied, till Mr. Bruce de- 

 tected it, whose observations have thrown much 

 light on a subject formerly involved in doubt and 

 darkness. By taking the jerbo for the daman-israel, 

 the same which the Hebrews called schafan, all that 

 Arabian authors have said of the second has been 

 ascribed to the first. In truth, on reading the phi- 

 lological dissertations which have been composed 

 on the subject, and after the jerbo was well known, 

 a man was embarrassed in attempting to discover 

 in that quadruped, the mode of living, the instinc- 

 tive sagacity, the profound wisdom, which the 

 writers of the East have so much cried up, and 

 which Solomon celebrates in his Proverbs-}-. Thus, 

 it is ascertained, that whatever has been written by 

 the Hebrews or the Arabians, on the subject of the 

 superior qualities of a species of animals which dig 



* Travels through Barbary. 



■f Quatuor sunt minima terra, & ipsa sunt sapientiora sapievtibus 



Lefiusculus ; it is thus that the Vulgate translates the word, 



but the schafan is the animal described : Plebs invalid^ qua col- 

 locat inpetru cubile suum. Proverbs, xxx. 24. 26. 



their 



