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OHALDEE LANGUAGE CHALK 231 other trace of national literature in this lan- guage, if there was any such, having disap- peared, while of the kindred Assyrian tongue only scanty inscriptions have been preserved. The history of the Babylonian priest Berosus, of which fragments have been saved, was origi- nally written in Greek. Besides a few words in Genesis (xxxi. 47) and Jeremiah (x. 11), we have in the Hebrew canon several chapters of Daniel (from ii. 4 to vii. 28) and Ezra (from iv. 8 to vi. 18, and vii. from 12 to 26) written in this language ; and of works of later Jewish writers, the different Ohaldaic translations and paraphrases (Targumim) of various parts of the Bible, the two Talmuds, and some more modern productions. The apocryphal books of Tobit, Judith, and Maccabees, as well as the history of the Jewish war by Josephus, are also supposed to have been originally written hi Chaldaic, this idiom having become by de- grees the common language of the Jews after the Babylonish captivity, and particularly from the tunes of the Maccabees. Of the Targums, that attributed to Onkelos, a strict translation of the Pentateuch, is distinguished by the pu- rity of its idiom, surpassing that of the Biblical fragments : that of Jonathan ben Uzziel, a para- phrase of the historic and prophetic books, and the Pseudo-Jonathan and Hierosolymitan para- phrases of the Pentateuch, are less pure and valuable. (See TABGUMS.) Of the Talmuds only the Gemaras or the commentaries are composed in a Ohaldaic idiom, which is greatly corrupt, chiefly in that of Jerusalem, and re- quires a particular study; while the shorter and older Mishnah, or the text, is Hebrew, though with Aramaic features. After the con- quest of Babylonia by the Arabs in the year 640, the use of the Ohaldee language gradually ceased ; and it is now spoken only in a few most- ly Christian communities in the mountains of Kurdistan. As a dialect it is distinguished from the Syriac by its avoiding diphthongs and the vowel o, for which it generally has a, by the use of dagesh forte, as well as by generally accenting the last syllable, and a less defective writing ; from the Hebrew, with which it has a common alphabet, by broadness, by substi- tuting labial for hissing sounds, ac for n and 3>, t> for 'is, and by comparative poverty in vowels. In forms it is poorer than both the Hebrew and Syriac. To the best grammars of this language belong those of Buxtorf, Michaelis, Harris ("Elements of the Chaldaic Language," Lon- don, 1822), Filrst (Leipsic, 1835), Petermann (1841), Winer (Leipsic, 1842), and Bertheau (Gottingen, 1843). The great dictionary of Nathan ben Jehiel of Rome (of the llth cen- tury), entitled Arukh, and enriched with ad- ditions by Mussaphiah, has been published in- a more modern form by Landau (5 vols., Prague, 1819 et seq.). Buxtorf s Lexicon Chaldaicum, Talmudicum et Rabbinicum (Basel, 1640), is founded upon it. Luzzatto's Oheb-Ger, Gei- ger's LeTir- und Lesebuch eur Sprache der Mischna (Breslau, 1845), and J. Levy's CJial- daisches Worterbuch uber die Targumim (Leip- sic, 1866-'8) are valuable contributions. CHALEURS, Bay of (so called from the great heat of the weather when it was first visited by Jacques Cartier, the discoverer of Canada), a wide inlet of the gulf of St. Lawrence, which separates the province of Quebec from that of New Brunswick. It receives the wa- ters of the Restigouche river, which have their source in the mountainous regions of Gasp6, of the Caraquet, the Bass, the Jaquette, the Benjamin, Tte a Gauche, Branche Sud, and Chariot. Here mackerel fishers are at- tracted in autumn, when that fish arrives in the course of its migrations. It has been a matter of dispute whether this is a bay in the sense of the term intended by the con- vention of 1818 between England and the United States, and whether the fishermen of the latter country, prior to the treaty of Washington, could be excluded from it. The doubt arose from its extent, 12 to 20 m. in width and 90 in length. Though there are some shallows at the entrance of one or two harbors, the bay affords safe navigation and secure anchorage. In 1T60 a French fleet was defeated here by the British. CHALICE (Lat. calix, a cup), the vessel con- taming the consecrated wine in the sacrament of the eucharist. In honor of its sacred pur- pose, it has usually been made of as costly a substance as the circumstances of a church per- mitted, and often embellished with sculptures and precious stones. St. Ambrose relates that in periods of distress the early Christians sold their chalices to aid the poor. CHALK, an earthy mineral, consisting of car- bonate of lime of friable texture, easily rubbed to a white powder. It constitutes rock forma- tions of vast extent, being seen along the shores of the North sea and the English chan- nel, in England and France, towering up in cliffs sometimes 1,000 ft. high, that dazzle the eye with their brilliant whiteness. The rock formation of which chalk is the principal mem- ber, and which is called the cretaceous or chalk formation, is the upper group of the secondary series. It is traced across the continent of Europe from the north of Ireland toward the southeast to the Crimea, and from the south of Sweden to beyond Bordeaux, occurring in patches over the greater part of the included area. It gives to the topography an interest- ing variety of abrupt cliffs upon the coasts and rivers, and of bold hills in the interior, inter- sected in every direction with valleys of smooth and flowing outline ; but the soil it produces is in general too calcareous to be very produc- tive. A remarkable feature in the chalk for- mation in some localities is the occurrence of layers of flint nodules in the rock, horizontally arranged, and not in contact with each other, and of all shapes and sizes, varying from an inch to a yard in circumference. The flints frequently appear to be concretions of silicious matter around organic substances, as parts of