We cannot read the history of the plagues which God brought upon Pharaoh by the hands of Moses, without stopping a moment to consider a singularity, a very principal one, which attended this plague of the fly. It was not till this time, and by means of this insect, that God said, he would separate his people from the Egyptians. And it would seem, that then a law was given to them, that fixed the limits of their habitation. It is well known, as I have repeatedly said, that the land of Goshen, or Geshen, the possession of the Israelites, was a land of pasture, which was not tilled or sown, because it was not overflowed by the Nile. But the land overflowed by the Nile was the black earth of the valley of Egypt, and it was here that God confined the flies; for he says, it shall be a sign of this separation of the people, which he had then made, that not one fly should be seen in the sand or pasture ground, the land of Goshen, and this kind of soil has ever since been the refuge of all cattle emigrating from the black earth to the lower part of Atbara. Isaiah, indeed, says, that the fly shall be in all the desert places, and consequently the sands; yet this was a particular dispensation of providence, to answer a special end, the desolation of Egypt, and was not a repeal of the general law, but a confirmation of it; it was an exception, for a particular purpose, and a limited time. I have already said so much of this insect, that it would be tiring my reader’s patience to repeat any thing concerning him. I shall therefore content myself, by giving a very accurate design of him, only observing, that, for distinctness sake, I have magnified him something above twice the natural size. He has no sting, though he seems to me to be rather of the bee kind; but his motion is more rapid and sudden than that of the bee, and resembles that of the gad-fly in England. There is something particular in the sound, or buzzing of this insect. It is a jarring noise, together with a humming; which induces me to believe it proceeds, at least in part, from a vibration made with the three hairs at his snout. The Chaldee version is content with calling this animal simply Zebub, which signifies the fly in general, as we express it in English. The Arabs call it Zimb in their translation, which has the same general signification. The Ethiopic translation calls it Tsaltsalya, which is the true name of this particular fly in Geez, and was the same in Hebrew.