The Arabs Ibn Bitar, Algiahid, Alcamus, and Damir, and many others, have known the animal perfectly, though some of them seem to confound it with another called the Ashkoko. Ibnalgiauzi says, that the Jerboa is the only kind that builds in rocks, which from ten thousand examples I am sure he does not, nor is he any way made for it, and I am very certain he is not gregarious. They have a number of holes indeed in the same place, but I do not remember ever to have seen more than two together at a time. The Arab Canonists are divided whether or not he can be lawfully eaten. Ibnalgiauzi is of opinion he cannot, nor any other animal living under the ground, excepting the land crocodile, which he calls El Dabb, a large lizard, said to be useful in venereal pursuits, Ata and Achmet, Benhantal, and several others, expressly say, that the eating of the Jerboa is lawful. But this seems to be an indulgence, as we read in Damir, that the use of this animal is granted because the Arabs delight in it. And Ibn Bitar says, that the Jerboa is called Israelitish, that the flesh of it is dried in the outward air, is very nourishing, and prevents costiveness, from which we should apprehend, that medicinal considerations entered into this permission likewise. However this may be, it seems to me plain, such was not the opinion of the old translators of the Arab version from the Hebrew; they once only name this animal expressly, and there they say it is forbidden. The passage is in Isaiah, “They that sanctify themselves and purify themselves in the gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating swine’s flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the Lord[53].” The Hebrew word signifies mouse, and so our English translation renders it. But the Arabic version calls it expressly the Jerboa, and classes it with the abomination and swine’s flesh, that is, in the class of things in the highest degree forbidden. There is little variety in this animal either in size or colour, in the wide range that they inhabit. Towards Aleppo they have broader noses than the African ones, their bodies also thicker, and their colour lighter; a thing we always see in the Syrian animals, compared to the African. The first of these I saw was in London, in the hands of Dr Russel, who has wrote the history of Aleppo, of whom I have before made mention. Haym published an account of the Jerboa, so does Dr Shaw, but there exists not, that I know, one good figure of him, or particular description.