getation is thus consumed. Possibly this custom may be alluded to in Zech. xii. 6. I will make the governors of Judah like a hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf, and they shall devour all the people round about. Such fires may be kindled either from design or accident. In such instances, as obtaining the timber is the object, these fires are purposely lighted, and would be so managed as to do as little damage as possible, though some injury must certainly result from this method of felling trees. Strange as it may seem, we learn from TURNER'S Embassy to Tibet, (p. 13.) that there "the only method of felling timber in practice, I was informed, is by fire. In the trees marked out for this purpose, vegetation is destroyed by burning their trunks half through; being left in that state to dry, in the ensuing year the fire is again applied, and they are burnt till they fall." An allusion to something of this kind the prophet Joel certainly has in these words. Perhaps it may be rather to a general undesigned devastation by fire, than to any contrivance for procuring the timber.

No. 344.-iii. 3. And sold a girl for wine, that they might drink.] Considered as slaves are in the East, they are sometimes purchased at a very low price. Joel complains of the contemptuous cheapness in which the Israelites were held by those who made them captives. They have cast lots for my people, and have given a boy for an harlot, and sold a girl for wine, that they might drink. On this passage Chardin remarks, that," the Tartars, Turks, and Cosaques, sell the children sometimes as cheap, which they take. Not only has this been done in Asia, where examples of it are frequent; our Europe has seen such desolations. When the Tartars came into Poland they carried off all they were able. I went

thither some years after. Many persons of the court assured me that the Tartars, perceiving that they would no more redeem those that they had carried off, sold them for a crown, and that they had purchased them for that sum. In Mingrelia they sell them for provisions, and for wine."

No. 345.-AMOS ii. 1.

He burnt the bones of the king of Edom into lime.

To plaster the walls of his house with it, as the Chaldee paraphrase explains the text, which was a cruel insulting over the dead. A piece of barbarity resembling this is told by Sir Paul Rycaut, (Present State of the Greek Church, ch. ii.) that the wall of the city of Philadelphia was made of the bones of the besieged, by the prince who took it by storm.

No. 346.-iii. 12. The corner.] Sitting in the corner is a stately attitude, and is expressive of superiority. Russel says, "the divans at Aleppo are formed in the following manner. Across the upper end, and along the sides of the room, is fixed a wooden platform, four feet broad and six inches high; upon this are laid cotton mattrasses exactly of the same breadth, and over these a cover of broad cloth, trimmed with gold lace and fringes, hanging over to the ground. A number of large oblong cushions stuffed hard with cotton, and faced with flowered velvet, are then ranged in the platform close to the wall. The two upper corners of the divan are furnished also with softer cushions, half the size of the others, which are laid upon a square fine mattrass, spread over these of cloth, both being faced with brocade. The corners in this manner distinguished are held to be the places of honour, and a great man never offers to resign them to persons of inferior rank." Mr. Antes, among other observations made on the manners and customs of the Egyptians, from 1770 to 1782, says, on his being carried before one of the beys of Egypt, in

about half an hour the bey arrived, with all his men, and lighted flambeaus before him; he alighted, and went up stairs into a room, sat down in a corner, and all his people placed themselves in a circle round him.

No. 347.-iii. 12. A piece of an ear.] It seems odd to mention this as what a shepherd rescues from a lion, but RUSSELL (Hist. of Aleppo, p. 53.) informs us, that about that city they have one species of goat whose ears are considerable things, being often a foot long, and broad in proportion.

No. 348.-iii. 15. I will smite the winter house with the summer house.] There is a distinction made in the prophets between winter and summer houses. The account SHAW gives (Trav. p. 34.) of the country seats about Algiers, may explain this affair. "The hills and valleys round about Algiers are all over beautified with gardens and country seats, whither the inhabitants of better fashion retire during the heats of the summer. They are little white houses, shaded with a variety of fruit-trees and ever-greens. The gardens are all of them well stocked with melons, fruit, and pot-herbs of all kinds: and (what is chiefly regarded in these hot climates) each of them enjoys a great command of water." These summer houses are built in the open country, and are small, though belonging to people of fashion, and as such explain in the most ample manner the words of Amos, I will smite the winter house, the palaces of the great in the fortified towns, with the summer house, the small houses of pleasure used in the summer to which any enemy can have access; and the houses of ivory shall perish, those remarkable for their magnificence; and the great houses shall have an end, saith the Lord, those which are distinguished by their amplitude as well as

richness, built as they are in the strongest places, yet shall all perish like their country seats. (Jer. xxxvi. 22.) HARMER, vol. i. p. 225.

No. 349.—v. 19. As if he leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him.] Serpents sometimes concealed themselves in the holes and chinks of the walls of the eastern houses. This is confirmed by a remarkable story related by D'Herbelot.-Amadeddulat, who reigned in Persia in the tenth century, found himself reduced to great difficulties, arising from want of attention to his treasury. Walking one day in one of the rooms of his palace, which had been before that time the residence of Jacout, his antagonist, he perceived a serpent, which put its head out of a chink of the wall; he immediately ordered that the place should be searched and the serpent killed. In opening the wall there, they found a secret place, in which they could not discover the serpent, but a treasure, which was lodged in several coffers, in which Jacout had deposited his most precious effects. HARMER, vol. iii. p. 91.

No. 350.-v. 26. Ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch.] It is thought with great probability, that Moloch, and those other pagan deities, which the Israelites carried with them in the desert, were borne in niches upon men's shoulders, or drawn about on covered carriages, as we know the heathens carried their idols in procession, or in public marches. There are some who believe that those silver temples of the goddess Diana, which were made and sold at Ephesus, were also these niches, or portable temples, for the devotion of pilgrims.

The custom of carrying the images of the gods under tents and in covered litters came originally from the