File:Palestine - the physical geography and natural history of the Holy Land (1841) (14784090185).jpg

Identifier: palestinephysica00kitt (find matches)
Title: Palestine : the physical geography and natural history of the Holy Land
Year: 1841 (1840s)
Authors: Kitto, John, 1804-1854
Subjects: Nature in the Bible Physical geography Natural history
Publisher: London : Charles Knight
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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nd bounding, as if inexultation, at his freedom from the yoke man had imposed upon his kind. It seems alsothat it was less an inmate of Palestine than of the bordering plains and mountains. Theintense and untameable wildness of the animal is implied in nearly all the allusions to it; henceits adoption as the symbol of a perverse and incorrigible character in man, in which sense itoccurs several times—as in Job xi. 12 : Vain man would be wise, though he be born a wildasss colt. The Arabs still describe an ass of the desert an indocile and contumaciousperson. The animal brayed not over his grass—that is, when his food abounded ;a and intimes of excessive drought, and therefore of corresponding scarcity of food to man and beast,— The wild asses stood upon the plains,And snuffed up the wind like dragons:Their eyes were wasted, for there was no grass.—Jer. xiv. 6. We are also assured by an Apocryphal writer that the wild ass (onager) was the prey of the lion in the wilderness.b ■
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fl/.i/i mMmMm .. 6»M !// V (The Wild Ass. From a Drawing by Col. C. II. Smith.)a Job vi. 5. The Wild Ass stands much higheron its limbs than the common ass.Its legs are longer and more slender,and it is altogether a more gracefuland symmetrical animal, with a greaterpredominance of equinine forms andqualities than the domestic ass exhi-bits, and having therefore less resem-blance to it than to a very fine mule.The mane is composed of short erecthair of a dusky hue, and rather woollytexture. The colour of the body isuniform silvery grey, with a broadcoffee-coloured stripe extending downthe back, from the mane to the tail,and crossed on the shoulder by thesame transverse band which the do-mestic variety exhibits. The headof the species west of the Euphratesis much finer than that of Persia andCentral Asia, and is altogether a con-siderably handsomer animal. Indeed,we are informed by Colonel Smith (towhom we are indebted for the figurewe give), that not only is the Syrianwild ass larger

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