(Josephus' Wars, book iii. chap. xviii.") The lake of Tiberias is about twelve miles long and five wide. The largest of our English lakes, Windermere, in Westmorland, is only about ten miles long, and two in the widest part. Besides Tiberias, there were some smaller lakes, particularly Merom or Semachon, higher up the Jordan; one on the brook or river Jabbok, which falls into the Jordan below or to the south of Tiberias, and Jazer still farther south, about half way between that and the Dead Sea.

Of the twelve disciples of our Lord, five certainly, and two more probably, were fishermen. They lived upon the borders of the lake of Gennesareth, where they had ships or boats, and nets wherewith they caught fish, and where Christ introduced himself to Simon Peter and James and John, by bringing the great draught of fishes to their nets miraculously, after they had toiled all night and taken nothing, (Luke v. 1-11.) On another occasion, after his resurrection, he again brought them a draught of fishes, and when Simon Peter "drew the net to land" it was full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three; and for all there was so many, yet was not the net broken." (John xxi. 11.)

When Peter at Capernaum came to our Lord about the tribute money, he ordered him to cast a hook into the sea of Tiberias, and take out a fish, and he would find a piece of money in his mouth. (Matt. xvii. 24-27.) Mr. Bingley, in speaking of the haddock, says, "On each side of the body, just beyond the gills, there is a dark spot. Superstition asserts, that when St. Peter took the tribute money out of the mouth of a fish of this species, he left the impression of his finger and thumb, which has ever since been continued to the whole race of haddocks. Penn. Brit. Zool. iii. 179." (Anim. Biog. vol. iii. p. 138.) But the haddock is a saltwater fish, and the sea of Tiberias is a fresh-water lake. Mr. Mc. Quin, in his description of more than three hundred animals, speaking of the John Doree, says, "It would be an inexcusable neglect to pass this fish unnoticed, not on account of its disputing with the haddock the honour of having been pressed by the fingers of the apostle, nor of its having been trod upon by the gigantic foot of St. Christopher, when he carried on his shoulders a divine burden across an arm of the sea; but for the excellence of its flesh." (p. 271.) This fish is from hence called by the French, Le Poisson St. Pierre; and by the Italians, the Fish of St. Peter, Il Janitore, or the Porter, which has been corrupted into the

English name Johnny Dory. (See the Quarterly Review for July 1813. No. xviii. vol. ix. p. 269.) But the doree is likewise a salt-water fish.

Job, speaking of leviathan, says, "Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons, or his head with fish spears?" xli. 7. from whence we may conclude, that some of the larger fish were killed with spears or harpoons, something like what are used now in our whale-fishery.

What fish lodged the prophet Jonah in her belly, is not agreed; nor does this affect the credit of revelation, as the word rendered whale, signifies any large fish, (Jon. i. ii. Matth. xii. 40.) We know of no fish larger than the whale except Bishop Pontopidan's kraken, which he represents as similar to a small island, do really exist. Pliny speaks of whales 600 feet long, and 360 broad, and mentions the bones of one, brought from Joppa to Rome, which were 40 feet long. Bryant, in his "Observations upon some passages of Scripture," &c. supposes that these were "the bones of the spina collectively, exclusive of the head and the other extremity." He says, " Pliny does not say that the whole was brought away; and we may be assured that it was not, as the length is not in proportion to the large sidebones, and those of the spina." Pliny has said, Pliny has said, "The ribs appeared more in height than those of an Indian elephant. Those of the spina were a cubit (or something more than a foot and a half) thick," or rather in length, says Bryant. He adds, "This I am persuaded, from its situation and antiquity, was the very cetus to which the history of Jonah refers," (p. 242.) Some whales are said to lodge their young in their belly in times of danger. Whales feed on seaweeds, small fish, and other light provisions, and so Jonah might remain undigested in the belly of one. Many whales have no teeth, and so might swallow him without hurting him. But some assert, that the throat of a whale, being but about a foot and a half wide, could not swallow the prophet, and that it must rather have been a dog-fish, in the belly of which whole carcases have often been found; and of one of which, caught on the coast of Spain, Nierembergius relates, that a man on horseback might have entered its mouth, and seven men have lien in the cavity of his brain; that its jaws were 17 feet long, and it had two carcases in its belly. Or it must have been a shark, in whose belly human carcases, and sometimes clad in armour, have been found." (Brown, article Fish.)

Of the chalson, Mr. Cox gives an account in a note, taken

from Dr. Gill, in the second volume of that excellent work, his Female Scripture Biography. Speaking of Lydia as a "seller of purple," he says, "The purple dye is called, 1 Maccab. iv. 23. purple of the sea, or sea purple, it being the blood or juice of a turbinated shell-fish, which the Jews call chalson; this they speak of as a shell-fish. Hence these words, Go and learn of the chalson, for all the while it grows, its shell grows with it:' and that purple was dyed with the blood of it, appears from the following instances; The best fruits in the land, Gen. xliii. 11. are interpreted, the things that are the most famous in the world, as the chalson, &c. with whose blood, as the gloss on the passage says, they dye purple; and the purple dyed with this was very valuable, and fetched a good price. The tribe of Zebulon is represented as complaining to God, that he had given to their brethren fields and vineyards, to them mountains and hills; to their brethren lands, and to them seas and rivers; to which it is replied, All will stand in need of thee, because of chalson; it is said, Deut. xxxiii. 19. They shall suck of the abundance of the seas; the gloss upon it, interpreting the word chalson, is, it comes out of the sea to the mountains, and with its blood they dye purple, which is sold at a very dear price." (p. 384.)

Sandys, speaking of the purple, says, It is "a kind of shel-fish, having in the midst of his jawes a certain white veine, which contained that precious liquor; a die of soveraigne estimation." "The tongue of a purple is about the length of a finger, so sharpe and hard that he can open therewith the shell of an oyster; which was the cause of their taking. For the fishermen did bait their weeles therewith, which they suffered to sinke into the bottom of the sea; when the purples repairing thereunto, did thrust their tongues between the oisters, and pricking the gaping oisters, (kept for that purpose long out of the water,) were by the sudden clozings of their shels retained, who could neither draw them unto them, nor approach so near as to open them. They gathered together in the first of the spring, and were no where to be found at the rising of the dog-starre. The fishermen strove to take them alive; for with their lives they cast up that tincture. The colour did differ according to the coasts which they frequented: on the coasts of Africa resembling a violet, or the sea when enraged; neere Tyrus a rose, or rather our scarlet, which name doth seeme to be derived from them. For Tyrus was called Sur, in that built upon a rocke, which gave a name

unto Syria, (as the one at this day Sur, and the other Suria,) by the Arabians, (they pronouncing scan for san, and scar for sar,) and the fish was likewise named sar, or scar rather in their language:

Hic petit excidiis urbem, miserosque Penates,
Ut gemma bibat, et Sarrano dormiat astro.

VIR. Geor. 1. 3.

He cities sacks, and houses fils with grones,
To lye on scarlet, drinke in precious stones.

A colour destinated from the beginning to courts and magistracy; so that sometimes it is used for magistracy itselfe, as by Martial unto Janus:

Purpura te fælix, te colat omnis honos. 1. 8. ep. 8.

The happy purple, thee all honours honour.

The murex, though differing from the purple, are promiscuously used:

Tyrisque ardebat murice lana.

The wool with Tyrian murex shinde.

The excellence of the double dye, being light upon through defect of the former. But this purple is now no more to be had; either extinct in kind, or because the places of their frequenting are now possest by the barbarous Mahometans." (p. 215.)

Of the boats and ships of the Israelites, but little can be ascertained. The word boat occurs, John vi. 22.; but it had been called a ship, (verses 17 and 19,) and so are the fishing vessels called in several places, Matt. iv. 21. John xxi. 6. and Mark iv. 36, besides the ship in which Jesus was, "there were also with him little ships." So that ship was the name with them for any vessel however small, and probably their fishing vessels might be about the size of those used by the fishermen on our coasts, as being convenient for casting the net out and drawing it in.

"The tribes of Zebulun and Dan appear to have early begun a sea-trade, (Gen. xlix. 13. Judg. v. 17.) Solomon, and after him Jehoshaphat, set on foot a considerable trade by shipping, 1 Kings x. xxii." (Brown.) The "ship of Alexandria," in which Paul sailed from Lycia to Melita, (Acts xxvii. 5, 6.) carried "shipmen," and passengers two hundred and seventy-six souls. Two hundred and sixty men is, I believe, the complement of one of our thirty-six gun frigates: so that this must have been a large vessel. "Some

of the ancient ships," says Brown, "were enormously big. Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, had one of a stupendous magnitude and form, presented to him by Hiero, king of Syracuse. Ptolemy Philopater had one of 280 cubits long, 38 broad, and 48 high, and capable to stow 3800 men." The ark was only 300 cubits long, 50 broad, and 30 high.

Such are the particulars which the writer has been enabled to collect and to infer, respecting the Agriculture of the Israelites; and he cannot do better than conclude them in the words of Epictetus, as quoted by Archbishop Leighton in his Lecture on the Creation of Man, "If we were wise, what have we else to do both in public and in private, but to praise and celebrate the Deity, and to return our thanks to him? Ought we not, while we are digging, plowing, and eating, to sing to God this hymn-Great is the Lord, who has provided us with these necessaries of life! Arr. lib. i. cap. 16." (Leighton's Works by Jerment, vol. iv. p. 295.) P.

ORIGINAL LETTERS

FROM PERSONS EMINENT FOR LEARNING OR PIETY.

(From the Original, in the possession of J. B. Williams, Esq. of Shrewsbury.)

XX. FROM MR. JOSEPH WILLIAMS, OF KIDDERMINSTER, TO DR. DODDRIDGE.

REV.D & GREATLY HON. SIR,

Kidderm". 10th Octo". 1743.

Mr. Crane related to me ye Conversation he had wth you, & I doubt not you are willing to know what we have been doing. Mr Crane, at his Return set himself, somewhat unfairly, to oppose & beat down Mr Halford's Interest among us, wch was very strong, just as strong as Mr Adams's had been, & earnestly to recommend Dr Steward; upon whose Character, & ye expected good Fruits of his settling with us, he flourished wth an unbounded Profusion of what Rhetoric he is Master of. And this he did, as I apprehend, not so much from a Dislike to ye former, as from a fond attachment to ye latter above all other Min" in Engl. joined with a prevailing Fear of a Division in case ye former shd settle wth us. Four Days he laboured earnestly, & in vain, to shake our Attachment to Mr Halford; but on Fri