362 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. ix. 



reni dwelt in Arabia in the neighborhood of megalithic structures, 

 concerning one of which Palgrave, referring at the same time to 

 Stonehenge, says : " There is little difference between the stone 

 wonder of Kasseem and that of Wiltshire, except that one is in 

 Arabia, and the other, more perfect, in England." According 

 to Philostoroius, the Homeritae were the descendants of x\braham 

 by Keturah ; and the relation between the Hebrew zimran a 

 song, and the Erse amhran, having the same meaning, enables 

 us to understand not only the connection of the forms Zimri and 

 Homeritae, but other pairs of words like Sumer and Aymara, 

 and Zimuhr and Amor. The Celtic dialects again, both as 

 regards their grammar and vocabulary, present many Semitic 

 features, such as might be expected to exist in the speech of an 

 Arabian family and the descendants of the patriarch Abraham. 

 It is worthy of note that the people of Homeir or the Homeritae 

 were notorious for speaking a very corrupted dialect. In the 

 Arabian historians, Homeir appears as a descendant of Kahtan, 

 from whose son Saba the Kahtanites were called Sabeans ; but 

 many old writers, Arabian and others, distinguish between Sabeans 

 and Homeritae ; and the conclusion of Dr. Russell, in his Con- 

 nection of Sacred and Profane History, is that they were two 

 distinct peoples, distinct yet closely related. Allowing the truth 

 of the statement of Philostorsfius that the Homeritse were the 

 descendants of Keturah, a fact rendered probable by their pos- 

 session of the rite of circumcision, the most natural solution of 

 the relation between Homeritas and Kahtanite Sabeans is that 

 the latter were the descendants, not of Joktan, the son of Eber, 

 but of Jokshan, the son of Abraham, and brother of Zimran, 

 who also had a son Sheba, his eldest son, while the Sheba of 

 Joktan occupies a very subordinate place in the family of that 

 patriarch. The language of the Himyaritic inscriptions confirms 

 this, for we find that, like the Aramaean, it often replaces shm 



in Bokhara, it is natural to suppose that the Zemirai of his line were 

 the originators of the name Samarcand. The Ait Amor of Africa with 

 the Aymaras of Peru would naturally connect with this Becherite line 

 rather than with that of Zimran, through the Aumri. I have not yet 

 found the precise relation sustained by the posterity of Zimran, repre- 

 sented probably by the Zamareni of Arabia, to the family of Yorham. 

 Yet from the intimate connection of the Zimri with the Matiani of 

 Media as set forth in the Bible and in the Assyrian inscriptions, and 

 of these again with tribes of Jorhamite descent, it would seem that 

 the two stocks had amalgamated. 



