We must find some other symbolism, closer and clearer.
"Here the classification of naturalists would be useless, for a biped and a reptile not unfrequently bear the same interpretation as emblems.
The simplest plan will be to divide the Church menagerie into two large classes, real beasts and monsters; there is no creature that we may not include in one or the other category." Durtal paused to reflect: "Nevertheless to arrive at a clearer notion and better appreciate the importance of certain families in Catholic Mythography, we had better first take out all those animals which symbolize God, the Virgin, and the Devil, setting them aside to be referred to when they may elucidate other figures; and at the same time weed out those which apply to the Evangelists and are combined in the figures of the Tetramorph.
"The surface thus being removed, we may investigate the remainder, the figurative language of ordinary or monstrous beings.
"The animal emblems of God are numerous; the Scriptures are filled with creatures emblematic of the Saviour.

David compares Him, by comparing himself, to the pelican in the wilderness, to the owl in its nest, to a sparrow alone on the house-top, to the dove, to a thirsting hart; the Psalms are a treasury of analogies with His qualities and His names.
"Saint Isidor of Seville--Monseigneur Sainct Ysidore, as the naturalists of old are wont to call him--figures Jesus as a lamb by reason of his innocence, as a ram because He is the head of the Flock, even as a he-goat because the Redeemer was subject to the flesh of iniquity.
"Some took as His image the ox, the sheep, and the calf, as beasts meet for sacrifice, and others those animals that symbolize the elements: the lion, the eagle, the dolphin, the salamander--the kings of the earth, air, water, and fire.

Some again, as Saint Melito, saw Him in the kid, the deer, and even in the camel, which, however, according to another passage of the same author, personifies a love of flattery and of vain praise.

Others again find Him in the scarabaeus, as Saint Euchre does in the bee; still, the bee is regarded by Raban Maur as the unclean sinner.
Christ's Resurrection is, to yet other writers, symbolized by the Phoenix and the cock, and His wrath and power by the rhinoceros and the buffalo.
"The iconography of the Virgin is less puzzling; She may be symbolized by any chaste and gentle creature.

The Anonymous Englishman in his _Monastic Distinctions_, compares Her to the bee, which we have seen so vilified by the Archbishop of Mayence, but the Virgin was most especially represented by the dove, the bird of all others whose Church functions are most onerous.
"All authorities agree in taking the dove as the image at once of the Virgin and of the Paraclete.