Every traveler on the Nile brings away a handful of the smaller scarabs, genuine or otherwise. Some may not particularly care to possess them; yet none can help buying them, if only because other people do so, or to get rid of a troublesome dealer, or to give to friends at home. I doubt, however, if even the most enthusiastic scarab-fanciers really feel in all its force the symbolism attaching to these little gems, or appreciate the exquisite naturalness of their execution, till they have seen the living beetle at its work. In Nubia, where the strip of cultivable land is generally but a few feet in breadth, the scarab’s task is comparatively light and the breed multiplies freely. But in Egypt he has often a wide plain to traverse with his burden, and is therefore scarce in proportion to the difficulty with which he maintains the struggle for existence. The scarab race in Egypt would seem indeed to have diminished very considerably since the days of the Pharaohs, and the time is not perhaps far distant when the naturalist will look in vain for specimens on this side of the first cataract. As far as my own experience goes, I can only say that I saw scores of these beetles during the Nubian part of the journey; but that to the best of my recollection this was the only occasion upon which I observed one in Egypt. The Nile makes four or five more great bends between Gebel Abufayda and Siût; passing Manafalût by the way, which town lies some distance back from the shore. All things taken into consideration--the fitful wind that came and went continually; the tremendous zigzags of the river; the dead calm which befell us when only eight miles from Siût; and the long day of tracking that followed, with the town in sight the whole way--we thought ourselves fortunate to get in by the evening of the third day after the storm. These last eight miles are, however, for open, placid beauty, as lovely in their way as anything north of Thebes. The valley is here very wide and fertile; the town, with its multitudinous minarets, appears first on one side and then on the other, according to the windings of the river; the distant pinky mountains look almost as transparent as the air or the sunshine; while the banks unfold an endless succession of charming little subjects, every one of which looks as if it asked to be sketched as we pass. A shâdûf and a clump of palms--a triad of shaggy black buffaloes, up to their shoulders in the river, and dozing as they stand--a wide-spreading sycamore fig, in the shade of which lie a man and camel asleep--a fallen palm uprooted by the last inundation, with its fibrous roots yet clinging to the bank and its crest in the water--a group of sheiks’ tombs with glistening white cupolas relieved against a background of dark foliage--an old disused water-wheel lying up sidewise against the bank like a huge teetotom, and garlanded with wild tendrils of a gourd--such are a few out of many bits