PREHISTORIC BIRDS 9 
most ready to hand could most easily be offered with the she 
Goat and the Ram.* Then we recall the reference in Isaiah, 
“Who are these,” exclaims the prophet, “ that fly as a cloud, 
and as the Doves to their windows? ’—arubbah—that is “ dove- 
cots’ (Is. lx. 8). If the translation is correct, they were a 
domestic species, and dove-cots, or pigeon-houses are proved 
to have been coeval with the Kings of Judah. 
First Observers of the Migration of Birds.—There are many 
theories as to the origin and subsequent development of 
bird-migration, but whatever may have been the source from 
which it sprang, it is clear that it was going on some thousands 
of years before the Christian era. It was not likely that this 
great biannual movement would be overlooked by the ancients, 
and in fact we have several intimations of their having accu- 
rately observed it. There were naturalists in those days as 
there are now, although the records left behind them be but 
few. 
The first of these is the well-known passage in the Book 
of Job, “ Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom, and stretch her 
wings towards the south ? ’t 
Next we have that graphic Bible story of the miracle of 
the Quails in Sinai, told in two passages in the Pentateuch, 
when the Israelites were saved from starvation by great flights 
of these birds. On the first occasion, for they refer to different 
dates—in fact, a year apart—the sacred narrative tells how 
“it came to pass that at even the quails came up, and covered 
the camp’ (Exodus xvi. 13). The expression “at even” is 
to be noticed, as characteristic of the habits of Quails, which 
migrate by night, as do most birds. 
Again we read in the Book of Numbers, that “There 
went forth a wind from the Lord, and brought quails from the 
sea’? (Num. xi. 13). The appearance of an unusual number 
of a migratory species is often to be connected with a high 
wind, which in this instance Lane supposes to have been the 
south-western Khamasin,{ an idea supported by a reference 
to it in the Psalms.§ 
* Genesis xv. 9. 
+ Job xxxix, 26, 
t “Modern Egyptians,” II., p. 222. 
§ Psalm Ixxviii, 26. 
