Their sacrifice bring,
And loud to the praise of their master they sing:
The hellish desires Which satan inspires,
In sonnets they breathe,
And shouting descend to the regions of death.”
CHAPTER VII.
SIXTH DAY.
Section I.—On Quadrupeds and Reptiles.
Quadrupeds in general — Motion — Habits — Rumination — Proportion — Tastes — Clothing — Weapons — Proportionate Number — Faculties — Reptiles — Religious Improvement.
On the sixth day all terrestrial animals were formed. “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind, and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind.” According to Dr. A. Clarke, the words נפש חיה nephesh chaiyah, translated living creature, are a general term used to express all creatures endued with animal life, in any of its infinitely varied gradations; from the half-reasoning elephant down to the stupid potto, or lower still, even to the polype,[157] which seems equally to share the vegetable and animal life. The word חיתו chaiyeto, translated beast, and by Mr. Parkhurst, rendered wild beasts, seems to signify all wild animals, as the Lion, the Tiger, the Panther, the Lynx, the Hyæna, &c., and especially such as are carnivorous, or subsist on flesh. בהמה behemah, which we translate cattle, probably means those of the domestic species, such as are graminivorous, or live on grass and other vegetables; and are capable of being tamed, and applied to domestic purposes. The word properly means beasts, and is so understood by the Seventy, whose interpretation of the words of Job is, “Behold the beasts with thee, they eat grass like oxen.” According to Ab, Ezra, and the Targum, it is the “name of any great beast.” But R. Levi says, that it is “an animal peculiarly called by that name.”