WAYSIDE NOTES. 3 
placed before other unclean animals, for the Talmud says ‘“‘ Dogs 
may be fed on the Sabbath day, but not swine”; and we learn 
from Josephus that Herod kept a regular hunting establishment 
as well as a huntsman, following up the sport in a country 
abounding with stags and other wild animals. 
The words of the text, 2 Kings viii. 138, “Is thy servant 
a dog (or more correctly the dog), that he should do this great 
thing?” is commonly quoted, with the omission of the word 
*‘ creat,” to show the very low estimation in which dogs were 
held by the Jews, whereas it may very possibly allude to the 
power of the dog in Hazael doing this ‘‘ great” and terrible 
thing, or has reference only to the pariah. 
Although the Hebrews were not, as a rule, much given to 
field sports, lions being taken in pitfalls, as at the present 
day by the Arabs (2 Sam. xxiii. 20), and birds in traps or 
snares (Amos iii. 5; Eee. ix. 12), which may possibly account 
for the few occasions on which dogs are mentioned in the 
Scriptures, yet I think it may be inferred, from the various 
texts I have quoted, that several breeds of dogs were known to 
the Israelites, differing from the miserable pariah, the scavenger 
of the East; such, for example, as shepherd dogs, watch dogs, 
house dogs, companionable dogs, and dogs used for the chase ; 
and certainly dogs of far higher grade than the dog of Sacred 
History is popularly supposed to have occupied. 
WAYSIDE NOTES DURING A WEST COUNTRY DRIVE. 
By Ceci Sirsa. 
I senp a few wayside notes, made during a driving tour last 
year, which extended further to the westward than that de- 
scribed by me in ‘The Zoologist’ for 1883, p. 448. Instead 
of Wilts and Dorset we were this time chiefly in Devon and 
Cornwall, getting as far as the Land’s End and the Lizard, and 
back over Dartmoor. We started from Bishops Lydeard on the 
16th of May, and drove to Minehead. We saw nothing about 
the Harbour there but a few immature Herring Gulls, no adults 
amongst them. Amongst the furze on the hillside towards the 
sea were a considerable number of Stonechats; most of them 
