156 JAMES NEIL, M.A., 
obscure Biblical allusion, it will be well to describe its 
working. 
The annual cultivation of arable land begins as soon as 
the first heavy rain, the Hebrew DWa, geshem, Palestine Arabic 
wasam, or “ gushing down-pour,” has saturated the soil, and 
has made it possible for the people to plough; for before 
this the ground becomes baked into a pottery-bke hardness 
during the six consecutive months of rainless, cloudless heat 
which occur from April to October. These sub-tropical showers 
usually commence between the middle of November and the 
latter part of December. Then all the male inhabitauts who 
possess cattle and purpose ploughing meet in a general 
gathering. There is no such division of permanent classes 
amongst the people of a Palestine village as we recognise in 
the terms “farmer and “labourer.” All of them, one as 
much as another, except such as are slaves, are by birth in a 
position answering to our “farmer.” All of them are born 
to aright to cultivate a share of the common lands of the 
village. The only difference amongst them is that some, 
being wealthier than others, possess more oxen with which to 
plough, and can therefore cultivate larger tracts of ground.* 
* There can be little doubt that cattle, as the means of ploughing the 
land, were in early times the chief, if not often, the sole, form of wealth. 
This fact is very strikingly preserved in the etymology of words that 
stand for property in land and money. Take for instance “ fee,” with 
its related terms “feodum,” “ feud,” “fief,” and “feudal,” which first 
is the name for an estate in land (anciently the right to the use of a 
superior’s land as a stipend for services to be performed), now seen in such 
legal expressions as “ fee-simple,” a “limited fee,” or “fee-tail ; 
secondly, is used figuratively for any property or possession, as in 
Spenser’s “laden with rich fee;” and thirdly, signifies “a reward for 
service,” “a charge,” or “pay,” as a lawyer’s or physician’s fee, fees of 
office, marriage fees, &c There is general agreement that this term 
“‘fee” is derived from the Scottish fe, fee, or fie, Old Saxon fe, O.H. Ger- 
man fihu, N.H. German veh, Swedish and Danish /d@, all which mean 
“ cattle.” The words “ pecuniary,” “ impecunious,” &c., and “ peculium,” 
through the Latin pecwnia, “money,” are equally plainly derived from 
the Latin pecus, “cattle,” the first chief form of movable property pos- 
sessed by mankind in early ages. ‘‘Chattels,” a legal term which occurs 
in the expression “goods and chattels,” and which stands for every kind 
of property except the freehold or the things which are parcel of it, a 
word more extensive in its meaning than “ goods” or “effects,” comes 
without doubt from “cattle,” which name for domestic animals col- 
lectively, more especially those of the bovine genus, through the O. Eng- 
lish eatel, O. French catel, catal, cheptel, Spanish caudal, L. Latin, captale, 
capitale, is derived from the Latin capitalis, “relating to the head,” or 
“chief,” because from the earliest ages, down probably to a much more 
recent period than many suppose, such beasts constituted the principal 
