Various readings of the word _Kippôd_--The Jewish Bible and its object--The Syrian Hedgehog and its appearance--Its fondness for dry spots--The prophecies of Isaiah and Zephaniah, and their bearing on the subject--The Porcupine supposed to be the Kippôd--The Hedgehog and Porcupine called by the same name in Greek and Arabic--Habits of the Porcupine--Its quills, and the manner of their shedding. In our Authorized Bible, there are one or two passages where the Hebrew word _Kippôd_ is translated as BITTERN. For example, there is Isaiah xiv. 22, 23, "I will cut off from Babylon the name, and remnant, and son and nephew, saith the Lord. I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water, and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of hosts." Then there is another passage of the same prophet (xxxiv. 11), "But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it (_i.e._ Idumea), the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it." The last mention of this creature occurs in Zephaniah ii. 14, "And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her (_i.e._ Nineveh), all the beasts of the nations: both the bittern and the cormorant shall lodge in the upper lintels of it; their voice shall sing in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds; for he shall uncover the cedar-work." Now, in the "Jewish School and Family Bible," a new literal translation by Dr. A. Benisch, under the superintendence of the Chief Rabbi, the word Kippôd is translated, not as Bittern, but Hedgehog. As I shall have to refer to this translation repeatedly in the course of the present work, I will give a few remarks made by the translator in the preface. [Illustration: SYRIAN HEDGEHOG. "_Pelican and hedgehog shall possess it._"--ISA. xxxiv. 11. (Jewish Bible).] After premising that both Christian and Jew agree in considering the Old Testament as emanating from God, and reverencing it as such, he proceeds to say that the former, as holding himself absolved from the ceremonial law of the Mosaic dispensation, has not the interest in the exact signification of every letter of the law which necessarily attaches itself to the Jew, who considers himself bound by that law, although some ceremonies, "by their special reference to the Temple in Jerusalem and the actual existence of Israel in the Holy Land, are at present not practicable."