u

a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not." The term ogs, which the evangelists use in recording this affecting address, originally signified a bird of any kind; but in the progress of language, its meaning was gradually contracted, till it became appropriated to the household fowl. The truth of this remark is placed beyond a reasonable doubt by the learned Bochart, to whose elaborate work the reader is referred." In Homer and Hesiod, the word is used in its most general signification; but in the time of Plato, it began to suffer a change, and to be restricted to the domestic fowl; and for some ages, it was employed to denote indiscriminately the male and the female, till custom, the great arbiter of language, determined that it should be the proper name of the latter." In the evangelists, therefore, ogvis does not signify a bird in general, as it is rendered in the Vulgate, and some other versions of Luke, but the hen, as they properly translate it in Mathew. It is used in this restricted sense in the Syriac, and by most of the ancients, except Ambrose on Luke, and in the authorised English version. It is justly appropriated to the hen, because she hatches her eggs like other birds, and also gathers her brood under her wings, and cherishes them with maternal heat. Hence the Arabian writers emphatically call her the mother of congregation. The renowned Augustine often asserts, that it is peculiar to the hen to be so affected with the weakness of her chicks, as to become herself infirm and sick. Thus, in his Commentary on the fiftyeighth Psalm, he observes that Christ became feeble unto death, and assumed the flesh of infirmity, that he might

" Matth. xxiii, 37, and Luke xiii, 34.

▾ Ibid.

་

Hieroz. lib. i, cap. 18, p. 125.

gather the children of Jerusalem under his wings, as the hen becomes feeble with her brood. And a little after; I mention a thing well known, which happens every day in our presence, how her voice becomes hoarse, her whole body rough and shaggy, her wings hang down, and her plumage is disordered. And on the ninetieth Psalm, many birds hatch and rear their young before us, but no bird sympathises with its young like the hen. Let us attend to the swallow, the stork, and the sparrow; when we see these birds out of their nests, it cannot be known that they have young. But the breeding hen is known by the weakness of her voice, the disorder of her plumage, and the universal change which her maternal tenderness produces. Because they are weak, she becomes weak.-No figure, then, could be more happily chosen to express the infinite love of Christ, and his ardent desire to deliver his people from the sin and misery of their fallen condi tion, his watchful care and powerful protection, and the safety and happiness of those that believe in his name.

X

The Peacock.

This beautiful bird, which is now familiarly known to perhaps every nation of Europe, does not seem to have found his way into Palestine before the reign of Solomon. That rich and powerful monarch, added to his unexampled wisdom, a taste for natural history; and every three years his fleets returned laden with the most curious and valuable products of distant regions. The elegant shape, the majestic mein, and the splendid plumage of the peacock, rendered him a present not unbefitting the greatest king the world had ever seen; and the servants of Solomon, stimulated probably not more by a sense of * Bochart. Hieroz. lib. i, cap. 18, p. 126.

duty, than by inclination to gratify their amiable sovereign, were forward to place it under his eye. "For the king had at sea a navy of Tarshish, with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tarshish, bringing gold and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.”z The Hebrew name of this bird is (n) thochijim, which the Greek interpreters, not understanding, left without explanation; but the Chaldee, the Syriac, and other translators, render it the peacock. The origin of the Hebrew name is unknown; and accordingly, various are the conjectures in which the learned have indulged their imaginations, or critical acumen. Bochart imagines it is an exotic term; and changing the Hebrew (")In) thochijim by inversion into ("n) cuthijim, he traces it to a Cushite root, intended to denote the native country of the peacock. Nor is it uncommon for an animal to derive its proper name from the place of its original residence. The pheasant is indebted for her name to the Phasis, a river of Colchus, on the banks of which she first drew the attention of the postdiluvian tribes; and African and Numidian birds are so called from Africa or Numidia, the country where they were hatched, and where they commonly fixed their abode. On the same principle, the peacock himself is every where called by the ancients the bird of Media or Persia, in which the land of Cush, or Cuth, was situate, because he came originally from that region.a

Aristophanes calls the peacock the bird of Persia; Suidas, the bird of Media; and Clemens Pædagogus, the

y Ælian de Nat. Animal. lib. iii, cap. 42, and lib. v, cap. 21, 32.

* 1 Kings x, 22, and 2 Chron. ix, 21.

Bochart. Hieroz. lib. i, cap. 20, p. 136.

bird of India. Diodorus observes, that Babylonia produces a very great number of peacocks marked with colours of every kind. In the opinion of Bochart, India is the true native country of that bird; but it is frequently mentioned as a native of Persia and Media, because it was first imported from India into these countries, from whence it passed into Judea, Egypt, and Greece, and gradually found its way into the other parts of the globe. Hence the peacocks, which were imported in the fleet of Solomon, probably came from Persia; for in that long voyage of three years, in which they visited Taprobane, it is by no means probable they would always pursue a direct course; but along the various windings of the coast, search for any thing that suited their purpose. It is even probable that they sailed up the Persian gulf, and touched at the renowned isles of the Phoenicians, Tyrus or Tylus, and Aradus, at no great distance from Persia.c

The elegance of the peacock's form, and the brilliancy of his plumage, seem to be the principal reasons which induced the mariners of Solomon, to bring him into Palestine, and that the sacred historian so distinctly mentions the circumstance. Nature, according to the remark of Varro,d has certainly assigned the palm of beauty to the peacock; but since the introduction of the ape into Palestine, an animal neither distinguished by the elegance of his form, nor the brilliancy of his colour, is mentioned at the same time, the historian might intend to direct the reader's attention, as well to the riches and splendour of Solomon, as to his taste for rare and curious articles of natural history. In the Lesser Asia, and in Greece, the

b Lib. ii, cap. 53.

See Bochart. Hieroz. lib. i, c. 20, p. 137.

d De Re Rustica, lib. iii, cap. 6.

peacock was long held in high estimation, and frequently purchased by the great and the wealthy, at a very great price. We learn from Plutarch, that in the age of Pericles, a person at Athens made a great fortune by rearing these birds, and shewing them to the public, at a certain price, every new moon; and to this exhibition, the curious Greeks crowded from the remotest parts of the country. The keeper of these birds, the same author informs us, sold a male and female for a thousand drams, about thirty-six pounds of our money. Peacocks were very rare in Greece, even in the time of Alexander, who, by the testimony of Ælian, was struck with astonishment at the sight of these birds on the banks of the Indus; and from admiration of their beauty, commanded every person that killed one of them, to be severely punished. At Rome, as the same historian relates, when Hortensius. first killed one for supper, he was brought to trial, and condemned to pay a fine. Their eggs, according to Varro, were sold in his time at five denarii, or more than three shillings a piece; and the birds themselves commonly at about two pounds of our money. The same writer affirms, that M. Aufidius Luzco derived an yearly revenue of more than sixty thousand pieces of silver, which amounts to four hundred and sixty-eight pounds fifteen shillings sterling, from the sale of peacocks; for although their flesh is not better tasted than that of a domestic fowl, they were sold at a much greater price on account of the richness and brilliancy of their plumes. These statements prove, that the peacock was deemed, in remote ages, a present not unworthy of a king.