Once travelling on the desert east coast of Zanzibar island and sleeping in the open, I awakened in the night to find an eclipse of the moon in progress (1901 was the year). I expected my boat boys to be alarmed at the phenomenon, especially as they were some of the original inhabitants of the island, not mingled with Arab blood. But they took it very calmly, saying something to the effect that “The English know all about that!” In my Red Sea village in 1909, it was quite different. On going out in the morning my clerk asked me whether I had been disturbed by the natives’ efforts to save the moon’s life, or, as he put it, Had I _heard_ the eclipse? It appears that directly the shadow touched the moon everyone was aroused and a beating of tin cans commenced, with loud prayers that God would not allow the moon to be destroyed. One of the origins of superstition is false reasoning from observed fact. When a native has a wound or open sore he is careful to keep his nose plugged with rag, or to sniff continually at aromatic substances, as he believes the smell of a wound will cause fever and mortification. The observation that if a wound smells, the patient is likely to be in a bad way, is sound enough, but the inference that the smell, or any smell, e.g. women’s scents, causes the fever is superstition. I am informed that this idea is very widespread. I fear my applications of iodoform, than which nothing can have a more persistent smell, will convince the natives that we share their belief in the efficacy of “drowning,” rather than preventing, the odour of decay. Somewhat similar was the native treatment of a man who fell from the roof of a house we were building. He was lying senseless when I arrived, his nostrils carefully plugged with onion! Probably the smell of onion, like that of ammonia, may be useful in fainting, but far more important is free access of air, and _that_ they treated as a matter of no account at all. The great remedy for everything is the application of a red-hot nail. Hence many of the scars which otherwise might be taken for the results of fighting.