IN THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES. 109 
hyena is not weak, — though it repairs to caves and dens, 
— as it is solitary rather than social, — as, in prowling for 
its prey, it discovers fierceness and imprudence rather than 
cunning and artifice, it cannot be the animal of which we 
are in search. 
On account of the difficulty of fixing on an animal, 
which has bristles like a hedgehog or a hyena, to which the 
term Choirogryllios can apply, we are indebted to another 
Greek scholiast, for this strange interpretation of the Choi- 
rogrylhoi : " They are," says he, " a kind of fish, hares, or 
what are called gadflies."" 
While the Gannim Israel is bristly along the back, 
whence it has some resemblance to the hedgehog, or hyena, 
may it not also have the appearance of a large mouse ? as 
we have already noticed that the Jerboa has. Let us try 
if we can trace it by that name among one or other of the 
Greek and Roman naturaHsts. Herodotus, in book fourth 
of his History, chapter one hundred and ninety-second, 
tells us, that, " in Egypt, some mice are two-footed," mean- 
ing the Jerboa ; " some are Zegeries," as he calls them, or 
dwelling on mountains ; " and some Ipjj/ys?,"" that is, with 
bristles like a hedgehog. With equal distinctness, Ari- 
stotle, in the sixth book of his History of Animals, near 
the end, observes, " some mice, in Egypt, have hard hair, 
like land-urchins ; and others walk on two feet, and have 
the fore feet short, and the hind feet long." Pliny, in 
book tenth, chaptei* sixty-fifth, of his Natural History, has 
confounded these two kinds of mice : " The Egyptian mice 
have hard hair, like hedgehogs ; and walk on two feet, as 
the alpine mice." 
But, further, may not the Ashkoko, if not the Jerboa, 
suggest to the ordinary observer the idea of a bear as well 
as a mouse ? So Jerome, in his Letter to Frutela and 
JuNiA : " We must know that there is an animal, not 
