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that country, he does not say our version of Ps. civ. 17, has been understood to suppose this, and that therefore it is inaccurate, and that the heron must be meant by the Psalmist, which is according to the vulgar translation, which Doubdan must be understood to have considered as authentic; but after all, if it be true, that the storks of Palestine roost in trees, as Doubdan affirms, our English translation may be perfectly just-Where the birds make their nest: as for the stork, the fir-trees are her house: where they rest, where they sleep, after the wanderings of the day are over, there their house may be said to be.

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It would be however both pleasing and use

ful, if some future traveller would strictly examine this matter, and communicate his observations to the learned world.

OBSERVATION XXXIII.

Of the Migration of different Kinds of Birds, and the Use to be made of it in Agriculture.

THE migration of birds has not only been attentively observed of late in Europe, but it was remarked anciently too, and in the Holy Land, as is visible from a passage of the Prophet Jeremiah, but it may be difficult to ascertain,

b Herodii domus dux est eorum.

Jer. viii. 7. "Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times, and the turtle, and the crane, and the swallow, observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of the LORD."

with precision the particular sorts he had in view; this indeed is by no means necessary, with respect to the general moral or religious purposes, for which Jeremiah mentions this phænomenon; but it considerably interests our curiosity, and distinctness here may add not a little to the energy of the expostulation.

The increasing the number of different sorts of birds that keep, with great regularity, the times of their appearing, gives strength to the expostulation: thus Isaiah mentions not only that the ox knoweth his owner, but adds too, that the ass knoweth his master's crib, Is. i. 3. But if they appear and disappear at different seasons, and yet keep their stated times very exactly, it is giving still greater life to the thought. And as there are such differences in fact, it is not improbable that the Prophet had such differences of time in view.

Many birds migrate, whose coming, or retirement is not attended to by common people; but there are others, whose presence is so remarkable, or the observing the time of their appearing or disappearing thought to be so useful, for the purposes of husbandry, or the conducting other economical matters, that the common people themselves, in a manner universally take notice of them.

Thus the ingenious Mr. Stillingfleet, in his Miscellaneous Tracts, many of them translations of some celebrated Swedish papers, has this remark, that "the peasants of Upland have this proverb: When you see the white-wagtail,

you may turn your sheep into the fields" (which it seems are housed all winter in Sweden ;)"and when you see the wheat-ear you may sow your grain." Here we see the usefulness of observing the time of the appearance of the white-wagtail in Sweden, for the better management of business in that country, which causes the coming of these birds to be remarked there; but these birds are little, or rather not at all noticed in England, at least in the north-west parts of the county of Suffolk. But every peasant in that county knows that the swallow and the cuckoo are not seen or heard among us in winter, but appear in the spring when the weather grows warm for the swallow upon its first coming repairs to our houses, and the noise the other makes at a distance from them, is too particular not to engage the attention of every hearer.

There is reason, therefore, to believe, that the birds Jeremiah referred to were not only migratory, but such as some way or other attracted, in a more particular manner, the notice of the inhabitants of Judea either from the numerousness of those flocks in which they travelled; the remarkable distinctive quality of their notes; their coming more commonly under their eye; or their being supposed to mark out the proper season for the applying themselves to this and that part of the business of civil life. And by this clue we shall more probably arrive at the meaning of the Prophet, than by philological disquisitions concerning

the Hebrew names. The utmost uncertainty, about the precise meaning of those names, appears in the writings of the various ancient Greek translators of the passage. Sometimes they do not attempt to translate a name, but merely express the original word in Greek letters; and where they do translate, they widely differ about the meaning of the words; and if Jews in Egypt, in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and others in those early times, were so indeterminate, little dependence can be admitted with regard to modern Jewish rabbies, and other laborious philologers. It must be much more satisfactory to attend to the facts travellers have given an account of, in modern or elder times.

Dr. Shaw saw the stork, returning in such numbers near to, or over the Holy Land, as could not but attract his notice, when he was on the coasts of that country: "I saw," says this ingenious traveller, in the middle of April 1722, (our ship lying then at anchor under Mount Carmel,) three flights of them, some of which were more open and scattered, with larger intervals between them; others were closer and more compact, as in the flights of crows and other birds, each of which took up more than three hours in passing by us; extending itself, at the same time, more than half a mile in breadth. They were then leaving Egypt, (where the canals and the ponds, that are annually left by the Nile, were become dry,) and directed themselves towards the N. E.. Those that frequent

the marshes of Barbary, appear about three weeks sooner than the flights above mentioned, though they likewise are supposed to come from Egypt; whither also they return a little after the autumnal equinox." Here their numbers attracted notice.

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Sir John Chardin has given us a short specimen of the Persian almanacks, in the 2d tome of his Travels in French. It contains only part of two months. But there, in that column which gives an account of the remarkable events that happen each month, the beginning of the singing of the nightingale is set down as one of those remarkables, which is supposed to be about a week after the opening of the Sultanic year, which begins with the entering of the sun into Aries,' consequently, according to this almanack, these birds begin to be heard, in that country, the latter end of march, N. S. Sir John has not set down the rest of the remarkable events that happen each month, by copying the whole of their almanacks, which it is to be wished he had done. He however informs us in another page, after having told us there that the beginning of the singing of the nightingale was a festival of the ancient Arabs, to solemnize the return of warm weather; and that they had another festival to express their joy at the departure of winter, which was marked out in this almanack as happening in the 12th month, and was called the coming of the storks, because that this

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