MALTA AND SICILY. 
127 
equally deficient in a knowledge of natural 
history. St. Paul himself was no doubt mis¬ 
taken in the nature of the animal which had 
attacked him. We know that many won¬ 
derful miracles were wrought by him, but he 
was not omniscient. Though a messenger 
from heaven had been sent to assure him 
that the lives of himself and his shipmates 
would be saved, St. Paul knew not the land 
on which they should be wrecked. “ How- 
beit, we must be cast on a certain island.” 
Jacob Bryant makes some further obser¬ 
vations on this subject, which are rather 
amusing. He says, that if we allow Meleda, 
the island in the Gulf of Venice, to be the 
scene of the shipwreck, the course taken by 
St. Paul and his companions on their way to 
Pome, after they had wintered in the island, 
is easily to be accounted for. From what 
follows, we might suppose that Bryant had 
