“Mule,” who would own half a soul, might prove most serviceable as a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, in fact as an agricultural labourer.  All we can say is that such “miscegenation” stands in the category of things not proven and we must object to science declaring them non-existing.  A correspondent favours me with the following note upon the subject:—­Castanheda (Annals of Portugal) relates that a woman was transporter to an island inhabited by monkeys and took up her abode in a cavern where she was visited by a huge baboon.  He brought her apples and fruit and at last had connection with her, the result being two children in two to three years; but when she was being carrier off by a ship the parent monkey kissed his progeny.  The woman was taken to Lisbon and imprisoned for life by the King.  Langius, Virgilius Polydorus and others quote many instances of monstruous births in Rome resulting from the connection of women with dogs and bears, and cows with horses, &c.  The following relative conditions are deduced on the authority of mm.  Jean Polfya and Mauriceau:—­1.  If the sexual organism of man or woman be more powerful than that of the monkey, dog, etc. the result will be a monster in the semblance of man. 2.  If vice-versa the appearance will be that of a beast. 3.  If both are equal the result will be a distinct sub-species as of the horse with the ass.

[FN#388] Arab.  “Tanim” (plur. of Tamimit) = spells, charms, amulets, as those hung to a horse’s neck, the African Greegree and the Heb.  Thummim.  As was the case with most of these earliest superstitions, the Serpent, the Ark, the Cherubim, the Golden Calf (Apis) and the Levitical Institution, the Children of Israel derived the now mysterious term “Urim” (lights) and “Thummim” (amulets) from Egypt and the Semitic word (Tamimah) still remains to explain the Hebrew.  “Thummim,” I may add, is by “general consensus” derived from “Tom” = completeness and is englished “Perfection,” but we can find a better origin near at hand in spoken Arabic.

[FN#389] These verses have already occurred, see my vol. i. p. 275.  I have therefore quoted Payne, i. p. 246.

[FN#390] Arab.  “Wakil” who, in the case of a grown-up girl, declares her consent to the marriage in the presence of two witnesses and after part payment of the dowry.

[FN#391] Such is the meaning of the Arab.  “Thayyib.”

[FN#392] This appears to be the popular belief in Egypt.  See vol. iv. 297, which assures us that “no thing poketh and stroketh more strenuously than the Gird” (or hideous Ahyssinian cynocephalus).  But it must be based upon popular ignorance:  the private parts of the monkey although they erect stiffly, like the priapus of Osiris when swearing upon his Phallus, are not of the girth sufficient to produce that friction which is essential to a woman’s pleasure.  I may here allude to the general disappointment in England and America caused by the exhibition of my friend Paul de Chaillu’s Gorillas:  he had modestly removed penis and testicles, the latter being somewhat like a bull’s, and his squeamishness caused not a little grumbling and sense of grievance—­especially amongst the curious sex.