108 DR. R. ANGUS SMITH ON THE 



language from which to find the root of the word ; but it 

 was necessary to work out the idea begun ; and for this 

 reason I took theopportunity of the nearness and friendliness 

 of Professor Theodores, from whom also I sought guidance 

 in going into other languages of the East. 



Having been satisfied that 1/am, "black ^' and '^'^ secret/'' 

 could have no useful meaning as applied to chemistry, I 

 decided to search if my new idea of chemistry as an agent 

 or art depending on heat was well founded, knowing next 

 to nothing of Hebrew, although three brothers who knew 

 more or less of Eastern languages gave me once a taste for 

 it ; I found that the word which I may write Hama meant 

 not only heat but the sun. Knowing also that the vowels 

 in the word were, under certain circumstances, changeable, 

 it was not difiicult to reach Hem ; and we may say that 

 every one knows that the name of Egypt is Ham, or Khem, 

 or Khemi. 



I then went to Prof, Theodores_, fearing to trust myself in 

 the maze of Hebrew etymologies; and he gave, as the mean- 

 ing of the most important derivative of Ham, "burnt black,'^ 

 and quoted from Littre's Dictionary under the word Chimie, 

 p. 76, " Cham, Kem, Khemi is a name often read on the 

 hieroglyphic monuments; it signifies properly ' black earth/ 

 and is the name of Egypt."*' It seems to me that the 

 meaning of an important derivative being " burnt black " 

 is a most valuable step in advance. This seems the proper 

 mode of connecting the word with heat. We can scarcely 

 imagine the word black being the root of the word sun ; 

 but we can easily imagine the word heat being so ; and the 

 heat, burning, leads us readily to black. 



Prof. Theodores says, " UdTl (cognate in character to 

 □n^) means to be hot, to heat; from it are derived the 

 nouns Ham-mah, ' heat,' also ' sun,' the receptacle of heat. 

 Another noun is Hema, ' fiery anger.' This latter form 



