Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/357

Rh Babylonians, the Israelites retained their old monthly sabbath, or festival of the new moon, and considered it to be the more important because the more ancient and national. Whether the monthly sabbath was coincident with the first weekly sabbath would depend upon whether the seven-day week, as borrowed from the Babylonians, was a civil period or a true subdivision of a lunar month. That the Israelites did borrow the weekly sabbath from the Babylonians there can scarcely be any doubt. We know that the Babylonians observed the seventh day as a day of rest, and the historical books of the Old Testament show that the Israelites had no knowledge of any such observance till after contact with Babylon.

 

HEN the would-be reformer Balmaceda ended his blighted career, a correspondent of the Chili Mercurio consoled himself with the thought that "the ruin of his friend, though in some respects an irreparable loss, had at least an experimental value."

A similar reflection may reconcile American naturalists to the fate of Pat Rooney, the champion chimpanzee of the Cincinnati Zoo. It will be a long time before the pet dealers of this continent get hold of another such marvel, but the manner of his death proves at least the impossibility of preventing lung disorders by habitual indoor life.

Pat's prison was in many respects a model of comfort. He had a rocking-chair and a variety of gymnastic contrivances, a bench and a dinner-table of his own, and could rely on a liberal allowance of well-selected food, served daily at convenient hours. The cage was large enough for extensive romps, and was kept as 