dages, and, to our purblind eyes, seems to present certain difficulties in locomotion. This speculation is full of interest, but perhaps it is dangerous to press too far inferences from the sacred text. We must ever remember that he who adds to the words of this holy book is cursed with him who takes away from them (Rev. xxii., 19), but perchance we avoid this danger by not regarding the existence of these supracrural-footed, flying, creeping things as a matter of faith, like that of the four-legged fowls, but only as a pious opinion.
The Israelites must have had serious difficulties during the period of transition between the queer beasts and their modern namesakes. Thus a four-legged beetle was "clean" (Lev. xi., 22), but "whatsoever hath more feet [than four] among all creeping things" was "unclean" (Ibid. 42), as, for instance, everything now known as a beetle. Perhaps beetles had four legs until the Jewish ceremonial law was supplanted by Christianity, and thereupon they suddenly changed into the modern six-legged kind. This change may have taken place even in the time of Moses, for it is remarkable that in Deut. xiv., 19 "every creeping thing that flieth" has become unclean and may not be eaten, and it would reconcile this apparent contradiction if we suppose that all the insects had suddenly developed an extra pair of legs, and so had come under the head of flying creeping things with more legs than four. Thus beautifully does science throw light on the dark places in scripture, and cause apparently discordant texts to harmonise.
In Numbers xvii. we read of a remarkable rod which in the space of a single night "budded and brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms and yielded almonds." So greatly can God expedite natural processes when he wills. Indian jugglers can now perform these marvels, but no one would dream of being so blasphemous as to suggest that Moses, who was "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians" (Acts vii., 22), played a conjuring trick in order to substantiate his brother's claim to the priesthood.
The unicorn is another animal of which we should know nothing were it not for the Bible. We find it mentioned in Deut. xxxiii., 17, in Job xxxix., 9—12, and in Ps. xcii., 10. There must therefore have been such an animal, as the Holy Ghost would not talk about a non-existent
