1536 Thk Zoologist— February, 1869. 



battle, he cannot build a bridge : with the elephant, the most docile 

 of all animals, at his very doors, he cannot utilize the powers of that 

 invaluable animal. I must not omit this opportunity of expressing 

 my opinion that the horrible system of Negro Slavery has been a 

 perpetual curse to the white man ; always lowering his standard of 

 morality ; always striking at the root of his Christianity. 



Egyptians. — However we may lament the almost entire absence of 

 authentic historic records respecting the Negro, except from the pens 

 of decidedly hostile historians, as Jewish and Egyptian, to both which 

 peoples he was a scourge and terror, we have no such difficulty with 

 his neighbour the Egyptian, who would seem to vie with the Negro, 

 both in antiquity and importance. Herodotus, the father of history, 

 B.C. 450, Thucydides, who lived at the same period, Manetho, the 

 Egyptian priest, B.C. 304, Eialostheues, a Greek philosopher, B.C. "250, 

 Diodorus Siculus, a Roman of the Augustan age, as well as -^lian, 

 Strabo, Plutarch, Pausaniiis and Philoslratus, seem to have made it 

 their especial mission to corroborate that adamantine record left by the 

 Egyptians themselves in their temples and their hieroglyphics. With 

 the first glimmer of history after the Cimmerian darkness of prehistoric 

 ages, we find Egyj)t grandly bursting through the gloom. The origin 

 of this people is by .some modern historians deduced from a son of 

 Noah, but Bimsen has shown that Menes the Great reigned over Egypt 

 3555 years before Christ, and therefore 1207 years before the deluge, 

 and that a succession of monarchs occupied the throne from Menes to 

 Cleopatra. Dr. Lepsius, who has devoted an almost incredible amount 

 of learning and industry to the inquiry, assigns to Meues a still more 

 remote date, while Dr. Kitto, the great biblical scholar, is disposed to 

 cut down this wonderful antiquity, in order to bring it more in accord- 

 ance with the chronology of the Bible. This question, deeply inte- 

 resting though it be, is one for theologians and historians, rather than 

 for the naturalist, to whose particular science it is altogether un- 

 important whether the Egyptian monarchy was in the zenith of its 

 glory two, three, four or five thousand years before the Christian crd. 

 The Bible, a hostile although truthful witness, mentions " Egypt" and 

 " Egyptian" two hundred and fifty times, and there is scarcely a single 

 mention but conveys the idea of vast supremacy. No poet laureate 

 ever penned a paean of victory with half the force that the book of 

 Exodus describes the expedition of Pharoah in pursuit of the Israelites, 

 and the utter destruction of his host in the Red Sea : " all the chariots 

 of Egypt and captains over every one of them, and all the horses of 



