48 The Birds of the A ssyrian Monuments and Records. 
almost exclusively confined to the North Sea, has been 
suggested as the nakhiru of the Assyrians obtained from the 
Mediterranean Sea. Parrots have been unhesitatingly placed 
as native birds in Palestine and the neighbouring countries, 
in utter disregard of the extreme improbability of their 
occurrence there, seeing that they belong pre-eminently to a 
tropical or sub-tropical group of birds. The frigate bird 
(Fregetta) has been suggested as the Shdldc ( ^?®) of the 
Hebrew Bible, a bird which in the case of both species of this 
genus is exclusively confined to tropical or sub-tropical parts. 
I hope that we have at last seen the end of the claims of 
the Oryx leucoryx to represent the rem of the Hebrew Bible, 
and the remu or am of the Assyrians and Accadians. At 
length, amongst our German friends the remu is understood 
to denote a "wild-bull." Haupt, Lotz, Hommel, and quite 
recently Delitzsch, have decided in its favour. It seems 
surprising, when we consider the abundant evidence in 
favour of some large species of wild-ox, that its claims have 
not been universally accepted as being the rem of the 
Hebrew Scriptures. 1 I believe that Bochart, the learned 
author of the Hierozoicon, who died in 1661, was the first — 
at any rate, the first author of note — who contended that 
the Hebrew rem (D* 1 ^. fft^D r^^H) was identical with the 
Arabic the white antelope of North Africa and lands 
adjacent to Palestine. Bochart was followed by Rosenmiiller, 
Winer, and most modern German commentators, as Ewald, 
Franz Delitzsch, Kalisch, etc. But did not Arnold Boot, 
in his Animadversiones Sacra?, as far back as 1644, show 
that the rem was probably some species of Urus, or wild 
ox ? Did not the learned Schultens in his Comment, in 
Jobam xxxix, translate the Hebrew word by Bos sylvestris ? 
Did not Gesenius (Thes., p. 1249) show very forcibly that some 
Bos ferus or bubalus was to be preferred to the dorca alba 
of Arabian writers? Parkhurst, Maurer, Carey, Robinson, 
1 So long ago as 1862 I showed the probable identity of the Bos primigenius 
with the Scriptural R'em (An. and Mag. Nat. Hist., November, 1862). Tristram 
confirmed this opinion in his " Land of Israel," and the Assyrian records and 
figures also bear clear testimony. 
