the surface, and one close under it, whilst all
the others are deeply concealed. When an inexperienced man perceives
that egg he takes it, and perhaps also the one close below it, and
after scraping up the sand a little, and finding nothing more goes
away; whilst a person who knows this habit of the ostrich does not
stop searching until he has got possession of all the eggs. You must
deal in the same manner with a liar, and not believe him till you get
to the bottom of his story, i.e. until you elicit the actual truth.

'When you observe that a man's whole attention is absorbed in
endeavours to make a good appearance by keeping his clothes nice, and
apprehensive lest they should be dirtied in any way, always picking
any little straws that might adhere to them, and constantly adjusting
his turban, consider him to be a peacock, whose nature is always to
admire his own person, to stalk about majestically, to display the
plumage of his tail, and to solicit praise of his beauty.

'If you become acquainted with a rancorous person who never forgets
the slightest insult, but avenges himself for it even after a
considerable lapse of time, compare him to a camel, for the Arabs
truly say of such a man that "he is more rancorous than a camel."
Avoid such a man as you would an ill-natured camel.

'When you meet a hypocrite, who is different from what he appears to
be, compare him to the Yarbu, _i.e._ the mouse of the desert, which
has two apertures to its lair, the one for an entrance, and the other
for an exit, so that it always cheats the hunter who digs for it.'

Yet another story-book may be quoted, viz., the 'Ilam en Nas,' or
Warnings for Men, containing historical tales and anecdotes of the
time of the early Khalifates. Some of these were translated by Mrs.
Godfrey Clerk in 1873 (King and Co.), and her little volume also
contains a very good genealogical table of the families of the
Prophet, and of the Rashidin (or 'rightly directed,' _i.e._ Abu Bakr,
Omar, Othman, and Ali), the Omaiyide, and the Abbaside Khalifs.

Among the many works of Arabic literature one of the most interesting
and the most amusing is Ibn Khallikan's celebrated Biographical
Dictionary. The author must have been a very intelligent and a very
industrious man, for his volumes contain an enormous amount of
information about many hundred Arabs. This work is rendered all the
more readable and all the more amusing by the many anecdotes related
in connecti