The Birds of the Assyrian Monuments and Records. 47 
once contained these Accadian bird - names are often 
mutilated — sometimes absolutely nothing, sometimes next to 
nothing, is left. The Assyrian names of course we must 
compare with Hebrew or Arabic, and see whether similar 
words occur in these or other cognate Semitic languages, 
and discover what is their ascertained or probable significa- 
tion. But unfortunately we are sometimes in the dark as to 
the birds which the names here represent, and we may in 
the interpretation of some Assyrian name be merely com- 
paring one unknown quantity with another, or sometimes 
explaining in fact ignotum per ignotius. Modern Arabic 
(vernacular) names sometimes afford a clue to identification, 
but they are used often in a vague and general sense, and 
seldom bring important aid. Again, the Accadian and 
Assyrian characters of the syllabary are frequently poly- 
phones : they have more phonetic values than one attached 
to them; so we do not always know for certain the real 
sound of a name, and how it was pronounced, so that the 
uncertainty of reading is added to that of identification. 
Sometimes, though rarely, we can obtain a clue by referring 
back to the earliest forms of the characters through their 
archaic types, as pictorially represented. When we consider 
therefore that the almost entire materials for help in attempts 
at identification stand on a philological basis, we must pro- 
ceed with caution. Philology is in our case a very important 
factor in the solution of the ornithological equation, but as 
I said before questions relating to zoology of necessity 
present zoological claims. 
It is from want of this recognition that some writers on 
this class of subjects and commentators have been led into 
very great mistakes, and given very unlikely or altogether 
impossible explanations of certain bird or other animal 
names under their consideration : thus we have the Hebrew 
Rem, an animal described as being of great size, powerful, 
and fierce, identified with the oryx ( 0. leucoryx), one of the 
most harmless of antelopes, simply because the Hebrew 
name is in sound at least similar to the Arabic word for 
that animal. The narwhal {Monodon monoceros), that curious 
marine cetacean with its one developed tooth, a creature 
