The Zoologist — February, 1869. 1537 



Egypt and all the horsemen ;" and then the panic that seized the 

 Israelites, and their prayer to Moses that he would return and let them 

 remain the slaves of this mighty people, rather than await the coming 

 of the irresistible force that pursued; and yet this is not written to exalt 

 the Egyptian, but to exhibit, in all its grandeur, the power of the God 

 of Israel. 



Thus we find the concurrent testimony of historians, sacred and 

 profane, raising Egypt to the very highest rank of dignity and im- 

 portance ; and did we not know the Egyptian as the creator of pyra- 

 mids and temples, of Luxor and Carnac, of Philae and Thebes, of 

 Sphinxes and Meranons, of hieroglyphics, those adamantine histories 

 that have defied the ravages of fire and sword, of Christian cannon and 

 the insatiable appetite of time, no rational doubt could be entertained 

 as to the greatness of a people that filled such diversified histories 

 with their wondrous achievements. But we do possess this corro- 

 borative evidence, and these stupendous relics of the past still look 

 down on us in serene and imperturbable majesty. 



Carthaginians. — Possessing but a slight, a very slight, know- 

 ledge of fiction and romance, it may perhaps amount to very little my 

 saying that I know of no romance so wild and improbable as the brief 

 but authentic history of Carthage. It is a current belief, and has for 

 at least two thousand years been taught in schools, that Carthage was 

 a colony settled by, refugees from Tyre : historians find support for this 

 hypothesis in the legendary pages of Theocritus, and philologists in the 

 language they suppose to have been Carthaginian ; but real history deals 

 with the subject in no obscure or mythic style ; Carthage first illumines 

 the historic page as the possessor of two hundred ships of war, each 

 having five ranks of rowers on each side, and thirty rowers in each rank: 

 thus three hundred oars were dipped simultaneously in the sea, and 

 when we multiply this number by that of the ships, we find that a force 

 of sixty thousand seamen was in constant requisition, and twenty-four 

 thousand fighting men, or marines, were ready for active service on 

 deck, without requiring any assistance from the rowers. Rome, then 

 possessing the opposite shore of the Mediterranean, was the most 

 powerful nation in the world, and it soon became manifest that two 

 such powers could not coexist; neither Rome nor Carthage knew any 

 bounds to her ambition. Carthage very early possessed herself of the 

 greater part of Sicily, and shortly afterwards of all Spain ; then came 

 perhaps the most daring military exploit the world has yet witnessed. 

 Hannibal led his victorious troops out of Spain, over the Pyrenees into 



SKCOND SERIES — VOL. IV. H 



