The identity of the Selâv with the common Quail is now seen to be established. In the first place, we have the name still surviving in the Arabic language. Next, the various details of the Scriptural narrative point so conclusively to the bird, that even if we were to put aside the etymological corroboration, we could have but little doubt on the subject. There is not a detail which is not correct. The gregarious instinct of the bird, which induces it to congregate in vast numbers; its habit of migration; its inability to fly against the wind, and the necessity for it to await a favourable breeze; its practice of flying by night, and its custom of merely skimming over the surface of the ground; the ease with which it is captured; the mode of preserving by drying in the sun, and the proverbial delicacy of its flesh, are characteristics which all unite in the Quail.
Before closing our account of the Quail, it will be as well to devote a short space to the nature of the mode by which the Israelites were twice fed. Commentators who were unacquainted with the natural history of the bird have represented the whole occurrence as a miraculous one, and have classed it with the division of the Red Sea and of the Jordan, with the various plagues by which Pharaoh was induced to release the Israelites, and with many other events which we are accustomed to call miracles.
In reality, there is scarcely anything of a miraculous character about the event, and none seems to have been claimed for it. The Quails were not created at the moment expressly for the purpose of supplying the people with food, nor were they even brought from any great distance. They were merely assisted in the business on which they were engaged—namely, their migration or customary travel from south to north, and waiting on the opposite side of the narrow sea for a south-east wind. That such a wind should blow was no miracle. The Quails expected it to blow, and without it they could not have crossed the sea. That it was made to blow earlier than might have been the case is likely enough, but that is the extent of the miraculous character of the event.
THE RAVEN.
The Raven tribe plentiful in Palestine—The Raven and the Dove—Elijah and the Ravens—Desert-loving habits of the Raven—Notions of the old commentators—Ceremonial use of the Raven—Return of the Ravens—Cunning of the bird—Nesting-places of the Raven—The magpie and its character—The starling—Its introduction into Palestine.