that the contempt and hatred of the class were not confined to foreign shepherds like the Hycsos. If their tyranny and oppression called out dislike to strangers of the same profession, it does not naturally follow that their own countrymen of this class would be hated likewise. Wilkinson's account suggests the most likely explanation. The shepherds proper were taken from a class which has ever been despised in heathen lands—the poorest of the community, and these very commonly deformed, dirty, and diseased. A fragment of Manetho's history preserved by Josephus (Against Apion, b. i.) is curiously corroborative of this supposition. Amenophis, he tells us, gathered together out of

Fig. 109.

A deformed Oxherd; Tombs near the Pyramids.-(Wilkinson.)

Egypt all that laboured under any defect of body, and sent them to the quarries on the east side of the Nile. The nomadic shepherds from the wilds of Arabia, in the long-run leagued with the "unclean people," and rebelled against the king, having obtained help from Jerusalem. Here, as in other fragments of Manetho's history which have come down to us, rays of truth are met with in the midst of manifest absurdities. He appears to have tried to explain the attitude of the Egyptians to the deformed, the leprous, and the unclean, by the tradition that they had joined the enemies of their country. But, perhaps, all that is to be drawn from verse 34 is, that this class of people were regarded with detestation from motives like those which influence the Chinese and Hindoos even at this day against the swineherds, and which are recognized by our Lord himself in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke xv.) The value of this alternative suggestion will be seen when it is remembered, that recent researches into Egyptian chronology go to indicate the likelihood that the governorship of Joseph fell during the Hycsos dynasty itself. If this were clearly made out, the explanation now proposed would meet the difficulty. Here was a whole tribe of shepherds about to settle in a land where the class was disliked. Reasons of state led Pharaoh to anticipate the difficulty, and thus they

were located in Bucolia, or Goshen, the district whose pastures supplied food in abundance for flocks. As if he had said to Joseph-Let them dwell there, until they gradually show the Egyptians that they are not like the class which they heartily despise.

The district in which they were located was a highly fertile one, but evidently much disturbed, from its situation as the eastern frontier, ever exposed to the attacks of the roaming, warlike nomades of the desert. The very character of Jacob's family, as itself that of a wandering chief, would secure for it, from these children of the wilderness, a respect which they would refuse to the Egyptians. The locality is still the most fertile in Egypt. "The land of Goshen," says Dr. Robinson, "was 'the best of the land;' and such too the province esh-Shurkiyeh has ever been, down to the present time. In the remarkable Arabic document translated by De Sacy, containing a valuation of all the provinces and villages of Egypt in the year 1736, the province of the Shurkiyeh comprises three hundred and eighty-three towns and villages, and is valued at 1,411,875 dinars-a larger sum than is put upon any other province, with one exception. During my stay in Cairo I made many inquiries respecting this district, to which the uniform reply was that it was considered as the best province in Egypt. Wishing to obtain more definite information, I ventured to request of Lord Prudhoe, with whom the Pasha was understood to be on a very friendly footing, to obtain for me, if possible, a statement of the valuation of the provinces of Egypt. This, as he afterwards informed me, could not well be done; but he had ascertained that the province of the Shurkiyeh bears the highest valuation, and yields the largest revenue. He had himself just returned from an excursion to the lower parts of this province, and confirmed, from his own observation, the reports of its fertility. This arises from the fact that it is intersected by canals, while the surface of the land is less elevated above the level of the Nile than in the other parts of Egypt, so that it is more easily irrigated. There are here more flocks and herds than anywhere else in Egypt, and also more fishermen. The population is half migratory, composed partly of Fellahs, and partly of Arabs from the adjacent deserts, and even from Syria, who retain in part their nomadic habits, and frequently remove from one village to another. Yet there are many villages wholly deserted, where many thousands of people might at once find a habitation. Even now another million at least might be sustained in the district, and the scil is capable of higher tillage to an indefinite extent."

GENESIS XLVIII.-L.

MESSENGER went to Joseph with the tidings, "Behold, thy father is sick. And he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim." When the father and son met, "Israel beheld Joseph's sons, and said, Who are these? And Joseph said unto his father, They are my sons, whom God hath given me in this place. And he said, Bring them, I pray thee, unto me, and I will bless them. (Now the eyes of Israel were dim for age, so that he could not see.) And he brought them near unto him; and he kissed them, and embraced them. And Israel said unto Joseph, I had not thought to see thy face: and, lo, God hath shewed me also thy seed" (ver. 8-11). Having blessed Joseph he turned to his sons, saying "The Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth" (ver. 16). Our translators have given in the margin "Let them as fishes increase into a multitude," as the alternative rendering of the original for "grow into a multitude." The expression deserves to be noticed. The writers of Scripture were all close observers of nature; so likewise were most of those whose experience they record. Jacob when he wandered to the shores of the Great Sea, or when he lingered with his flocks in the valley of the Jordan, or wandered to the deep-flowing Nile, had been struck with the rapidity with which the number of fishes increased, and now he longs that Joseph's children should increase as they. Most fishes, and especially such as man uses for food, are very prolific. The eggs of the cod (Morrhua callarias) are above nine millions. Those of the salmon (Salmo salar) are reckoned as more than twenty thousand. Looking at Joseph's sons in the light of this blessing, their progeny is seen to have been far more numerous than even the favoured tribe of Judah itself. Like the fishes they increased in multitude. "In the second year after the departure from Egypt they counted 72,700 warriors, whilst the tribe of Judah consisted only of 47,600 (Num. i. 27, 33, 35); at the end of the wanderings, when the census was taken in the plains of Moab, their number was 85,200 against 76,500 of Judah (Num.