284 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
two, and provided witli torches behind, with which the valiant 
Sampson did so much mischief to the harvests of the Philis- 
tines. 
They insist on the difficulty of collecting such a number of 
foxes and of attaching so many torches to their tails at the same 
time, but I justify the Hebrew version by pointing out a confu- 
sion in the translated text. 
It is clear to me that we must read wild boar and jackal where 
the Holy Writ says hog and fox, seeing that the jackal and wild 
boar are as common in Judea and Asia Minor as swine and foxes 
are rare ; and besides because foxes do not go in gangs like the 
jackals, and because the laws of Moses as well as that of Mahom- 
met prohibited the raising of swine. 
With this simple rectification the history of Samson is explained 
as well as those possessed of devils in the Gospel, and the veracity 
of the Holy Scriptures is saved. 
For one who has seen Egypt and Asia Minor, or only Algiers, 
it is not an affair of drinking the sea dry, to collect, with God’s 
aid, a few hundred jackals. 
In the winter of 1841, at Boufarik, I had asked three persons 
in my district, to procure me some jackal skins to make carpets of. 
they each brought me two dozen within three weeks. 
Furthermore, I consider that without jackals, Algiers would 
have been already, since our occupation, ten times desolated by 
plague, in consequence of the uncounted deaths of cattle and of 
mules, determined by the negligence of our military administration. 
In February, 1842, the herds of Boufarik alone, belonging to 
the Government, gave to the jackals of Mitija in eight days more 
than one hundred corpses of Spanish and Sicilian oxen, gigantic 
beasts. On the ninth day only their bones remained. 
Elian also relates, that in his day the foxes (read jackals) were 
so numerous in the countries adjacent to the Caspian sea, that 
bands of them were met with in the streets of cities, where the 
presence of men did not intimidate them. Tlie version of Elian 
is all in favor of my thesis. But, fox or jackal, it is still true that 
wdienever a bit of mischief is brewing, the evil beast is there. 
Antiquity has even accused it of loving human flesh, and Pan- 
