*Chapter xi. It is difficult to conceive the reason why, in the list of articles fit for food, eels should be forbidden as having no scales, and classed as unclean with hares and swans, while locusts, grasshoppers, and beetles are permitted. The Douay gives entirely different names to some of the prohibited animals, mentioning, amongst others, the griffin, an animal whose existence is much doubted. No naturalist has ever yet described it to us, it is only mentioned in a few old fables. *Chapter xvi., vv. 21 and 22. 'And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away, by the hand of a fit man, into the wilderness: and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities into a land not inherited, and he shall let go the goat into the wilderness.' Is not this supremely ridiculous? and the absurdity is only heightened by the inutility, for I do not find that the Israelites were ever let off from any punishment by reason of the scapegoat. The doctrine of the scapegoat has gained considerably of late; and it is the custom when an outcry is raised against the actors in any public grievance, to offer up some person (who generally is innocent of all participation in the offence) as a scapegoat. 'The Egyptians had a similar custom, as we learn from Herodotus, Book 2, chap. 39, who relates it in these words:-- '"After they have killed the goat, they cut off its head, but they flay the animal's body, after which, having pronounced many imprecations on the head, those who have a market and Grecian merchants dwelling among them, carry it thither and sell it to them; but those who have no Grecian residents to sell it to, throw the head into the fire, pronouncing over it the following imprecations:--'If any evil is about to befall either those that now sacrifice, or Egypt in general, may it be averted on this head!'" {67} 'The two customs, though not perfectly the same, are so far similar that the one appears to have been derived from the other. The import of both is certainly the same; for in both the goat is made use of as a substitute to draw away calamity from the party sacrificing; in the one case being sent into the wilderness, and in the other consumed by fire.'