THE BEAR
The Syrian Bear—Identity of the Hebrew and Arabic titles—Its colour variable according to age—Bears once numerous in Palestine, and now only occasionally seen—Reason for their diminution—Present localities of the Bear, and its favourite haunts—Food of the Bear—Its general habits—Its ravages among the flocks—The Bear dangerous to mankind—The Bear robbed of her whelps—Illustrative passages—Its mode of fighting—Various references to the Bear, from the time of Samuel to that of St. John.
Whatever doubt may exist as to the precise identity of various animals mentioned in the Scriptures, there is none whatever as to the creature which is frequently alluded to under the name of Bear.
The Hebrew word is Dôb, and it is a remarkable fact that the name of this animal in the Arabic language is almost identical with the Hebrew term, namely, Dubh. The peculiar species of Bear which inhabits Palestine is the Syrian Bear (Ursus Isabellinus), and, though it has been variously described by different eye-witnesses, there is no doubt that the same species was seen by them all. As is the case with many animals, the Syrian Bear changes its colour as it grows older. When a cub, it is of a darkish brown, which becomes a light brown as it approaches maturity. But, when it has attained its full growth, it becomes cream-coloured, and each succeeding year seems to lighten its coat, so that a very old Bear is nearly as white as its relative of the Arctic regions. Travellers, therefore, who have met the younger specimens, have described them as brown in hue, while those who have seen more aged individuals have stated that the colour of the Syrian Bear is white.
Owing to the destruction of forests, the Bear, which is essentially a lover of the woods, has decreased considerably in number. Yet, even at the present time, specimens may be seen by the watchful traveller, mostly about the range of Lebanon, but sometimes at a considerable distance from that locality. Mr. Tristram, for example, saw it close to the Lake of Gennesaret. "We never met with so many wild animals as on one of those days. First of all, a wild boar got out of some scrub close to us, as we were ascending the valley. Then a deer was started below, ran up the cliff, and wound along the ledge, passing close to us. Then a large ichneumon almost crossed my feet and ran into a cleft; and, while endeavouring to trace him, I was amazed to see a brown Syrian Bear clumsily but rapidly clamber down the rocks and cross the ravine. He was, however, far too cautious to get within hailing distance of any of the riflemen."
The same author mentions that some of the chief strongholds of this Bear are certain clefts in the face of a precipitous chasm through which the river Leontes flows. This river runs into the sea a few miles northward of Tyre, and assists in carrying off the melted snows from the Lebanon range of mountains. His description is so picturesque, that it must be given in his own words. "The channel, though a thousand feet deep, was so narrow that the opposite ridge was within gunshot. Looking down the giddy abyss, we could see the cliff on our side partially covered with myrtle, bay, and caper hanging from the fissures, while the opposite side was perforated with many shallow caves, the inaccessible eyries of vultures, eagles, and lanner falcons, which were sailing in multitudes around. The lower part had many ledges clad with shrubs, the strongholds of the Syrian Bear, though inaccessible even to goats. Far beneath dashed the milk-white river, a silver line in a ruby setting of oleanders, roaring doubtless fiercely, but too distant to be heard at the height on which we stood. This cleft of the Leontes was the only true Alpine scenery we had met with in Palestine, and in any country, and amidst any mountains, it would attract admiration."
BEARS DESCENDING THE MOUNTAINS.
On those elevated spots the Bear loves to dwell, and throughout the summer-time generally remains in such localities. For the Bear is one of the omnivorous animals, and is able to feed on vegetable as well as animal substances, preferring the former when they can be found. There is nothing that a Bear likes better than strawberries and similar fruits, among which it will revel throughout the whole fruit season, daintily picking the ripest berries, and becoming wonderfully fat by the constant banquet. Sometimes, when the fruits fail, it makes incursions among the cultivated grounds, and is noted for the ravages which it makes among a sort of vetch which is much grown in the Holy Land.
But during the colder months of the year the Bear changes its diet, and becomes carnivorous. Sometimes it contents itself with the various wild animals which it can secure, but sometimes it descends to the lower plains, and seizes upon the goats and sheep in their pastures. This habit is referred to by David, in his well-known speech to Saul, when the king was trying to dissuade him from matching himself against the gigantic Philistine. "And Saul said to David, Thou art not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him: for thou art but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth.... Thy servant kept his father's sheep, and there came a lion and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock: and I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his hand; and when he arose against me, I caught him by the beard, and smote him, and slew him. Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear: and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he hath defied the armies of the living God."—1 Sam. xvii. 33-36.
ON THE WATCH.
Though not generally apt to attack mankind, it will do so if first attacked, and then becomes a most dangerous enemy. See, for example, that most graphic passage in the book of the prophet Amos, whose business as a herdsman must have made him conversant with the habits, not only of the flocks and herds which he kept, but of the wild beasts which might devour them:—"Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! to what end is it for you? the day of the Lord is darkness, and not light. As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into a house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him." (v. 19.)
Another reference to the dangerous character of the Bear is made in 2 Kings ii. 23, 24, in which is recorded that two she-bears came out of the wood near Bethel, and killed forty-two of the children that mocked at Elisha.
As the Bear is not swift of foot, but rather clumsy in its movements, it cannot hope to take the nimbler animals in open chase. It prefers to lie in wait for them in the bushes, and to strike them down with a sudden blow of its paw, a terrible weapon, which it can wield as effectively as the lion uses its claws. An allusion to this habit is made in the Lamentations of Jeremiah (iii. 10), "He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places."
Harmless to man as it generally is, there are occasions on which it becomes a terrible and relentless foe, not seeking to avoid his presence, but even searching for him, and attacking him as soon as seen. In the proper season of the year, hunters, or those who are travelling through those parts of the country infested by the Bear, will sometimes find the cubs, generally two in number, their mother having left them in the den while she has gone to search for food. Although they would not venture to take the initiative in an attack upon either of the parents, they are glad of an opportunity which enables them to destroy one or two Bears without danger to themselves. The young Bears are easily killed or carried off, because at a very early age they are as confident as they are weak, and do not try to escape when they see the hunters approaching.
The only danger lies in the possibility that their deed may be discovered by the mother before they can escape from the locality, and, if she should happen to return while the robbers are still in the neighbourhood, a severe conflict is sure to follow. At any time an angry Bear is a terrible antagonist, especially if it be wounded with sufficient severity to cause pain, and not severely enough to cripple its movements. But, when to this easily-roused ferocity is added the fury of maternal feelings, it may be imagined that the hunters have good reason to fear its attack.
SEEKING AN OUTLOOK.
To all animals that rear their young is given a sublime and almost supernatural courage in defending their offspring, and from the lioness, that charges a host of armed men when her cubs are in danger, to the hen, which defies the soaring kite or prowling fox, or to the spider, that will give up her life rather than abandon her yet unhatched brood, the same self-sacrificing spirit actuates them all. Most terrible therefore is the wrath of a creature which possesses, as is the case of the Bear, the strongest maternal affections, added to great size, tremendous weapons, and gigantic strength. That the sight of a Bear bereaved of her young was well known to both writers and contemporary readers of the Old Testament, is evident from the fact that it is mentioned by several writers, and always as a familiar illustration of furious anger. See for example 2 Sam. xvii. 8, when Hushai is dissuading Absalom from following the cautious counsel of Ahithophel, "For thou knowest thy father and his men, that they be mighty men of war, and they be chafed in their minds as a bear robbed of her whelps in the field." Solomon also, in the Proverbs (xvii. 12), uses the same image, "Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather than a fool in his folly."
When the Bear fights, it delivers rapid strokes with its armed paw, tearing and rending away everything that it strikes. A blow from a bear's paw has been several times known to strip the entire skin, together with the hair, from a man's head, and, when fighting with dogs, to tear its enemies open as if each claw were a chisel.
Bears are capable of erecting themselves on their hinder limbs, and of supporting themselves in an upright position with the greatest ease. When attacked in close combat, they have a habit of rearing themselves upon their hinder feet—a position which enables them to deliver with the greatest effect the terrific blows with their fore paws, upon which they chiefly rely in defending themselves.
With fearful ingenuity, the Bear, when engaged with a human foe, directs its attack upon the head of its antagonist, and, as previously stated, has been known to strike off the entire scalp with a single blow.
A FAMILY-PARTY.
A hunter who had the misfortune to be struck down by a Bear—and the singular good fortune to afterwards escape from it—says, that when he was lying on the ground at the mercy of the angry beast, the animal, after biting him upon the arms and legs, deliberately settled itself upon his head and began to scarify it in the fiercest manner, leaving wounds eight and nine inches in length.
Bears are the more terrible antagonists from their extreme tenacity of life, and the fearful energy which they compress into the last moment of existence, when they are suffering from a mortal wound. Unless struck in the heart or brain, the mortally-wounded Bear is more to be feared than if it had received no injury whatever, and contrives to wreak more harm in the few minutes that immediately precede its death, than it had achieved while still uninjured.
Many a hunter has received mortal hurts by incautiously approaching a Bear, which lay apparently dead, but was in reality only stunned.
THE PORCUPINE
Presumed identity of the Kippôd with the Porcupine—Habits of the Porcupine—the common Porcupine found plentifully in Palestine.
Although, like the hedgehog, the Porcupine is not mentioned by name in the Scriptures, many commentators think that the word Kippôd signifies both the hedgehog and Porcupine.
That the two animals should be thought to be merely two varieties of one species is not astonishing, when we remember the character of the people among whom the Porcupine lives. Not having the least idea of scientific geology, they look only to the most conspicuous characteristics, and because the Porcupine and hedgehog are both covered with an armature of quills, and the quills are far more conspicuous than the teeth, the inhabitants of Palestine naturally class the two animals together. In reality, they belong to two very different orders, the hedgehog being classed with the shrew-mice and moles, while the Porcupine is a rodent animal, and is classed with the rats, rabbits, beavers, marmots, and other rodents.
It is quite as common in Palestine as the hedgehog, a fact which increases the probability that the two animals may have been mentioned under a common title. Being a nocturnal animal, it retires during the day-time to some crevice in a rock or burrow in the ground, and there lies sleeping until the sunset awakens it and calls it to action. And as the hedgehog is also a nocturnal animal, the similarity of habit serves to strengthen the mutual resemblance.
The Porcupine is peculiarly fitted for living in dry and unwatered spots, as, like many other animals, of which our common rabbit is a familiar example, it can exist without water, obtaining the needful moisture from the succulent roots on which it feeds.
The sharply pointed quills with which its body is covered are solid, and strengthened in a most beautiful manner by internal ribs, that run longitudinally through them, exactly like those of the hollow iron masts, which are now coming so much into use. As they are, in fact, greatly developed hairs, they are continually shed and replaced, and when they are about to fall are so loosely attached that they fall off if pulled slightly, or even if the animal shakes itself. Consequently the shed quills that lie about the localities inhabited by the Porcupine indicate its whereabouts, and so plentiful are these quills in some places, that quite a bundle can be collected in a short time.
There are many species of Porcupines which inhabit different parts of the world, but that which has been mentioned is the common Porcupine of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
THE MOLE
The two Hebrew words which are translated as Mole—Obscurity of the former name—A parallel case in our own language—The second name—The Moles and the Bats, why associated together—The real Mole of Scripture, its different names, and its place in zoology—Description of the Mole-rat and its general habits—Curious superstition—Discovery of the species by Mr. Tristram—Scripture and science—How the Mole-rat finds its food—Distinction between the Mole and the present animal.
There are two words which are translated as Mole in our authorized version of the Bible. One of them is so obscure that there seems no possibility of deciding the creature that is represented by it. We cannot even tell to what class of the animal kingdom it refers, because in more than one place it is mentioned as one of the unclean birds that might not be eaten (translated as swan in our version), whereas, in another place, it is enumerated among the unclean creeping things.
THE MOLE-RAT.
We may conjecture that the same word might be used to designate two distinct animals, though we have no clue to their identification. It is rather a strange coincidence, in corroboration of this theory, that our word Mole signifies three distinct objects—firstly, an animal; secondly, a cutaneous growth; and thirdly, a bank of earth. Now, supposing English to be a dead language, like the Hebrew, it may well be imagined that a translator of an English book would feel extremely perplexed when he saw the word Mole used in such widely different senses.
The best Hebraists can do no more than offer a conjecture founded on the structure of the word Tinshemeth, which is thought by some to be the chameleon. Some think that it is the Mole, some the ibis, some the salamander, while others consider it to be the centipede; and in neither case have any decisive arguments been adduced.
We will therefore leave the former of these two names, and proceed to the second, Chephor-peroth.
This word occurs in that passage of Isaiah which has already been quoted when treating of the bat. "In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver and his idols of gold, which they made each one to himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats; to go into the clefts of the rocks and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the Lord and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth."
It is highly probable that the animal in question is the Mole of Palestine, which is not the same as our European species, but is much larger in size, and belongs to a different order of mammalia. The true Mole is one of the insectivorous and carnivorous animals, and is allied to the shrews and the hedgehogs; whereas the Mole of Palestine (Spalax typhlus) is one of the rodents, and allied to the rabbits, mice, marmots, and jerboas. A better term for it is the Mole-rat, by which name it is familiar to zoologists. It is also known by the names of Slepez and Nenni.
In length it is about eight inches, and its colour is a pale slate. As is the case with the true Moles, the eyes are of very minute dimensions, and are not visible through the thick soft fur with which the whole head and body are covered. Neither are there any visible external ears, although the ear is really very large, and extremely sensitive to sound. This apparent privation of both ears and eyes gives to the animal a most singular and featureless appearance, its head being hardly recognisable as such but for the mouth, and the enormous projecting teeth, which not only look formidable, but really are so. There is a curious superstition in the Ukraine, that if a man will dare to grasp a Mole-rat in his bare hand, allow it to bite him, and then squeeze it to death, the hand that did the deed will ever afterwards possess the virtue of healing goitre or scrofula.
This animal is spread over a very large tract of country, and is very common in Palestine. Mr. Tristram gives an interesting account of its discovery. "We had long tried in vain to capture the Mole of Palestine. Its mines and its mounds we had seen everywhere, and reproached ourselves with having omitted the mole-trap among the items of our outfit. From the size of the mounds and the shallowness of the subterranean passages, we felt satisfied it could not be the European species, and our hopes of solving the question were raised when we found that one of them had taken up its quarters close to our camp. After several vain attempts to trap it, an Arab one night brought a live Mole in a jar to the tent. It was no Mole properly so called, but the Mole-rat, which takes its place throughout Western Asia. The man, having observed our anxiety to possess a specimen, refused to part with it for less than a hundred piastres, and scornfully rejected the twenty piastres I offered. Ultimately, Dr. Chaplin purchased it for five piastres after our departure, and I kept it alive for some time in a box, feeding it on sliced onions."
The same gentleman afterwards caught many of the Mole-rats, and kept them in earthen vessels, as they soon gnawed their way through wood. They fed chiefly on bulbs, but also ate sopped bread. Like many other animals, they reposed during the day, and were active throughout the night.
The author then proceeds to remark on the peculiarly appropriate character of the prophecy that the idols should be cast to the Moles and the bats. Had the European Mole been the animal to which reference was made, there would have been comparatively little significance in the connexion of the two names, because, although both animals are lovers of darkness, they do not inhabit similar localities. But the Mole-rat is fond of frequenting deserted ruins and burial-places, so that the Moles and the bats are really companions, and as such are associated together in the sacred narrative. Here, as in many other instances, we find that closer study of the Scriptures united to more extended knowledge are by no means the enemies of religion, as some well-meaning, but narrow-minded persons think. On the contrary, the Scriptures were never so well understood, and their truth and force so well recognised, as at the present day; and science has proved to be, not the destroyer of the Bible, but its interpreter. We shall soon cease to hear of "Science versus the Bible," and shall substitute "Science and the Bible versus Ignorance and Prejudice."
The Mole-rat needs not to dig such deep tunnels as the true Moles, because its food does not lie so deep. The Moles live chiefly upon earthworms, and are obliged to procure them in the varying depths to which they burrow. But the Mole-rat lives mostly upon roots, preferring those of a bulbous nature. Now bulbous roots are, as a rule, situated near the surface of the ground, and, therefore, any animal which feeds upon them must be careful not to burrow too deeply, lest it should pass beneath them. The shallowness of the burrows is thus accounted for. Gardens are often damaged by this animal, the root-crops, such as carrots and onions, affording plenty of food without needing much exertion.
The Mole-rat does not keep itself quite so jealously secluded as does our common Mole, but occasionally will come out of the burrow and lie on the ground, enjoying the warm sunshine. Still it is not easily to be approached; for though its eyes are almost useless, the ears are so sharp, and the animal is so wary, that at the sound of a footstep it instantly seeks the protection of its burrow, where it may bid defiance to its foes.
How it obtains its food is a mystery. There seems to be absolutely no method of guiding itself to the precise spot where a bulb may be growing. It is not difficult to conjecture the method by which the Mole discovers its prey. Its sensitive ears may direct it to the spot where a worm is driving its way through the earth, and should it come upon its prey, the very touch of the worm, writhing in terror at the approach of its enemy, would be sufficient to act as a guide. I have kept several Moles, and always noticed that, though they would pass close to a worm without seeming to detect its presence, either by sight or scent, at the slightest touch they would spring round, dart on the worm, and in a moment seize it between their jaws. But with the Mole-rat the case is different. The root can utter no sound, and can make no movement, nor is it likely that the odour of the bulb should penetrate through the earth to a very great distance.