Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 21.djvu/675

Rh happens if the surrounding vegetation is cut and taken away green. They say also that wolves are very fond of the Boranetz, and that it has within meat, blood, and bones." The Adne-hasadeh has, however, none of the Iamb-like character of the Boranetz, but, on the contrary, a spirit averse to restraint.

I believe a slight etymological rectification will give us a clew to the conception out of which this fable has grown. For tabur, navel, substitute tabaat, fundament, and from the cord connecting the navel with a root in the ground we are led to the tail, by which the animal hangs itself to a limb or a projecting root. The accounts of the ferocity of the Adne-hasadeh need not be rejected as silly and monstrous when we recollect how mischievous and destructive some apes are, as, for instance, the Cynocephalus sphynx, which may have stood for the original Adne-hasadeh, and which carries desolation into fields and gardens.

An important part is also assigned to apes in legends and parables. "When Noah was about to lay out his vineyard, Satan came up and asked him, 'Would you like to have me with you at the planting and the wine-making?' 'I am digging,' said Noah, evasively. What did Satan do? He brought up a lamb, a lion, a hog, and an ape, and killed them all in the vineyard till it was soaked with their blood. Thus it happens that man is soft and mild as a lamb after the first draughts; that he feels as brave and strong as a lion when he has drunken as much as agrees with him; then, when he has drunk more than enough, he becomes like a hog, disagreeable and boisterous; and, finally, when quite drunk, staggers and tumbles around, and makes faces, like a monkey." Perhaps the expression "to get as tipsy as a monkey" is derived from this. SynhedrinSanhedrin [sic] relates of the time of the confusion of tongues: "At the building of the tower of Babel men divided into three parties. One party said, 'We will go up to heaven and settle there'; the second party said, 'We will pray to our gods up there'; and the third party said, 'We will go up and make war.' The last were changed into apes and devils."

Seven vanities, says the "Kohelet," correspond with the seven phases of the life of man. When he comes into the world, everything kisses and embraces him; from two to three years old, he is like a pig, dirty, rooting everywhere, putting everything into his mouth; at ten years old he is jumping and capering about like a goat; at twenty, he is a horse, vain, enthusiastic, eager, looking around for a wife; when he takes a wife, he becomes an ass, bears burdens, and if he has children he is harassed like a dog to support them; and, when old, he becomes capricious and irritable, like an ape." A later writer, Salomon Ibn Verga, toward the end of the fifteenth century, describes the course of all things and beings as follows: "The coral forms the transition between the mineral and the vegetable kingdom, the sponge between the vegetable and the animal, and the ape is the intermediate