[112] The number Forty occurs very frequently in the Bible
        (especially the Old Testament) in connection with
        important events, and also in Asiatic tales.  It is, in
        fact, regarded with peculiar veneration alike by Jews
        and Muhammedans.  See notes to my Group of Eastern
        Romances and Stories (1889), pp. 140 and 456.

  [113] The “fruit of the forbidden tree” was not an apple, as
        we Westerns fondly believe, but wheat, say the Muslim
        doctors.

With regard to the forlorn associate of his guilt, from whom a long and painful separation constituted another article in the punishment of his disobedience, it is briefly related that, experiencing also for the first time the craving of hunger, she instinctively dipped her hand into the sea and brought out a fish, and laying it on a rock in the sun, thus prepared her first meal in this her state of despair and destitution.

Adam continued to deplore his guilt on the mountain for a period of one hundred years, and it is said that from his tears, with which he moistened the earth during this interval of remorse, there grew up that useful variety of plants and herbs which in after times by their medicinal qualities served to alleviate the afflictions of the human race; and to this circumstance is to be ascribed the fact that the most useful drugs in the materia medica continue to this day to be supplied from the peninsula of India and the adjoining islands.  The angel Gabriel had now tamed the wild ox of the field, and Allah himself had discovered to Adam in the caverns of the same mountain that most important of minerals, iron, which he soon learned to fashion into a variety of articles necessary to the successful prosecution of his increasing labours.  At the termination of one hundred years, consumed in toil and sorrow, Adam having been instructed by the angel Gabriel in a penitential formula by which he might hope yet to conciliate Allah, the justice of Heaven was satisfied, and his repentance was finally accepted by the Most High.  The joy of Adam was now as intense as his previous sorrow had been extreme, and another century passed, during which the tears with which Adam—­from very different emotions—­now bedewed the earth were not less effectual in producing every species of fragrant and aromatic flower and shrub, to delight the eye and gratify the sense of smell by their odours, than they were formerly in the generation of medicinal plants to assuage the sufferings of humanity.

Tradition has ascribed to Adam a stature so stupendous that when he stood or walked his forehead brushed the skies; and it is stated that he thus partook in the converse of the angels, even after his fall.  But this, by perpetually holding to his view the happiness which he had lost, instead of alleviating, contributed in a great degree to aggravate his misery, and to deprive him of all repose upon earth.  Allah, therefore, in pity of his sufferings, shortened his stature to one hundred cubits, so that the harmony of the celestial hosts should no longer reach his ear.