392 WHETHER DOMESTIC POULTRY WERE 
If any one is disposed to question the truth of these re- 
marks, because fatted fowls are said to be served up at So- 
lomon's and Nehemiah's table, let it be recollected, that the 
original words translated fatted fowls ^ are very ambiguous 
in their meaning ; and, that the ablest critics are agreed 
that they do not signify tame fowls of any kind, but wild 
fowls caught in hunting. 
In one passage alone, of all the books composing the 
Old Testament, in Jer. xvii. 11, Michaelis suspects that the 
hen is noticed, though he allows that this notice has been 
missed by commentators. It runs thus in the English 
translation : " As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatch- 
cth them not ; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, 
shall leave them in the middle of his days, and in the end 
shall be a fool.''' 
This translation, as far as the partridge is concerned, 
is not very satisfactory ; and on the margin of some Bibles, 
it has been altered into, as the partridge gathereth young, 
which she hath not brought forth." 
The name for the partridge in Hebrew is Awa, and 
it has been given to this bird from its cry. As the hen 
resembles the partridge in some particulars, though not in 
its cry, Michaelis has thought that Jiura here may include 
the hen. In conformity to this idea, he translates, The 
hen hatches, and clucks with the chickens of eggs not her 
own.'"* 
In order to make out this sense, he reads degig instead 
of degir, which, he thinks, has creeped into the text through 
the mistake of some transcriber ; and it is not to be denied, 
that, by such mistakes, many passages of the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures have been corrupted, and the difficulty of finding out 
their meaning increased to modern scholars. 
If we suppose the translation of this passage by Mi- 
chaelis to be right, the sense given to the words will agree 
