660 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



member between the animal and the man." Jalkut Reubeni remarks, 

 u The ape veils itself before man as man does in the presence of the 

 Shekinah.*' We recognize in this view the law brought into vogue by 

 Leibnitz, and extended by Bonnet, of the continuous graded ascent of 

 created beings. Finally, it is proper to state here that, according to 

 the agadistic view, the primitive man as well as the ape, for the most 

 part, lived only on vegetable food. "Flesh-eating was forbidden to 

 Adam as well as to all his posterity till the time of Xoah," say Le- 

 kachtob, Synhedrin, Jalkut Chadash, and Sefer Chassidim. 



While the references to apes in the ancient writings of the 

 Hebrews are generally of a matter-of-fact character, the stories and 

 delineations by the ancient Arabians have, as a rule, a romantic 

 stamp. The ape-men Xesnas, which Maimonides believes to mean the 

 Adne-hasadeh, play a conspicuous part in the Arabian travelers' sto- 

 ries, their romances, and their theology. I may state here that the ape 

 is called in modern Arabic Xesnas or Xasnas. A Mohammedan tradi- 

 tion runs : Ibn Abbas said : " Men (Xas) have perished and the Xes- 

 nas are left." He was asked, "What are Xesnas?" and he replied, 

 " Creatures which are like men and are still not men." Al-Gauhari 

 defines the Xesnas as "creatures that hop on one leg." The Xesnas 

 are very fully described by Al-Kazrwini as animals of a half -human 

 figure which serve the people as food. They have half a body, half a 

 head, a hand, and a leg, as if they were men split in two. This idea is, 

 I believe, only the too literal and hyperbolical carrying out of the 

 description of an ape as half a man. Wiistenfeld translates Xesnas by 

 " one-legged creature," and deduces from citations which he makes, 

 that God changed men into Xesnas as a punishment. The Koran, Su- 

 rah ii, says : "You know what happened to those among you who pro- 

 faned the Sabbath. We said to them, be apes and be excluded from 

 human society, in order that they might be an example for the present 

 and the future, and a warning to the pious." The Xesnas were said to 

 be Shemites, and descended from Shenrs son Hasim ; to sjjeak Arabic, 

 and to have Arabic personal names Ibn Ajjas, in his cosmography, 

 describes the Xesnas as creatures with one eye, one ear, and one leg. 

 Macudi gives a similar description and adds, that they rise out of the 

 sea. The Xesnas killed such men as thev could catch. 



According to another view, the Xesnas were identical with Gog and 

 Magog. Arabian historians speak of an invasion by a pygmy people 

 called Xesnas into Southern Arabia a tradition which is referred by 

 Fresnel to the irruption of the Roman legions. The question is raised 

 in the casuistics of Mohammedan ritual, whether it is right to eat the 

 flesh of the Xesnas. As a rule such food is absolutely forbidden. Aj 

 Tabbarii permits it, because aquatic animals are generally not for- 

 bidden. Wahrmund defines the Xesnas as a " large ape, an orang- 

 outang, a chimpanzee ; a one-armed and one-legged satyr that hops 

 fast." Muhis-ai-Muhis of Albustani says : " It is related in tradition 



