656 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



once in three years came the navy of Tarshish, bringing gold and silver, 

 and ivory, and apes, and peacocks." This is repeated in 2 Chronicles 

 ix, 21. The joint expeditions to Ophir referred to in 1 Kings ix, 27, 

 28, x and xi, and in 2 Chronicles ix, 10, were probably of the same 

 kind. The name of Tarshish (Tartessus in Spain), the most important 

 trading-point of the Phoenicians, had probably come into application 

 to designate all large merchant-vessels designed for long sea-voyages, 

 in whatever direction they might be accustomed to sail. The Hebrew 

 names for apes, kofim (singular Jcof), and peacocks, tuJcijim, undoubt- 

 edly point to an Indian derivation. For Jcof, ape, is in Sanskrit Jcafi, 

 " the nimble," and tukij corresponds with the Malabar togai. The 

 apes which the sailors of those times brought back from their distant 

 journeys were probably Asiatic, even if the possibility is not excluded 

 that the Israelite-Phoenician ships occasionally touched the African 

 coasts and brought monkeys thence. That different kinds of monkeys 

 were kept by the ancient Hebrews as pets, and were also trained for 

 employment in household tasks, appears in numerous places in the 

 post-Biblical literature. Four kinds of monkeys were particularly men- 

 tioned : Jcof, the ape in general, where it alone is named ; when it 

 appears at the same time with others it perhaps refers to the Indian 

 Hanuman (Semnojrithecus entellus) y Jcipud or Mptiph (regarded by 

 some commentators as an abbreviation of cercopithecus), a tailed ape 

 or baboon ; Adne-JiasadeJi, or Abne-Jiasadeh, or Adam-hasadeh (ac- 

 cording to Bochart), or Bar-nasJi-ditur, corresponding with the orang- 

 outang or the anthropoid apes ; and DelpJdJc. Everywhere is a rela- 

 tionship of the ape with man suggested, and in the ritual casuistics 

 the ape is regarded as a kind of man, and so considered in view of the 

 religious law. At the sight of an ape or a monkey, the benediction 

 was uttered, " Praised be he who changes his creatures ! " an allusion 

 to the belief which was found among many ancient people, especially 

 among the Arabs, that the ape was a degenerated form of man, or that 

 the latter took on the outward appearance of the ape in consequence 

 of moral degeneration (Talmud, B. Berachoth, 58 b.). But since the 

 ape to which the benediction applies is placed in the same category 

 with a negro, albino, or dwarf, the idea appears to underlie it that the 

 variation is an inborn one. The former acceptation is supported in 

 Berachoth 57 b., "To see an ape or a monkey in a dream is a bad 

 sign " ; and in Bereschit Rabba C, 23, " In the time of Enoch men 

 were changed into apes." Rabbi Jose taught that the corpse of an 

 Adne-hasadeh was unclean in the tent the same as that of a man, while 

 the laws in the case of the bodies of beasts were quite different. Im- 

 mediately afterward the same Rabbi Jose expresses the opinion that 

 the ape {Jcof) must be regarded as an undomesticable or hardly domes- 

 ticable animal. According- to him, the Adne-hasadeh stands much 

 nearer to man than the common ape or than any other tailed species 

 of ape. It appears from Joma 29 b and Menachot 100 b, that the ape 



