After the skeleton, there was sung a doleful song in honor of Maneros, whose identity is clouded by traditional disputes. Next, music and songs of more mirthful character were resumed. Sometimes jugglers, male and female, were hired for the occasion. They amused their audience with ball tossing, turning somersaults, leaping and wrestling. Occasionally, games, resembling our draughts or checkers, served to amuse those present (Ibid.), but as a rule the fumes of wine prevented any such quiet occupation, and the festival in many cases ended with a most riotous carousal. The foregoing is probably a true picture of a banquet in ancient Egypt--except that, according to some writers, the diners were seated on the floor and ate from very low stools or tables. Yet, in spite of all, the moral code of the early Egyptians was purer than that of contemporary nations. And commerce and war carried abroad the advanced thoughts, great learning and luxurious tastes of these ancient people, to be the foundations in after years of divers civilizations, amongst them our own. THE "VEGETABLE KINGDOM" OF ANCIENT EGYPT. The vegetable kingdom of ancient Egypt may be roughly divided into four great classes--trees and shrubs, esculent plants, grains and artificial grasses. Of the first named, the most important food providing trees were the doom and date palms, the sycamore, tamarisk and mokhayp or _myxa_. The doom palm (_Cucifera Thebaica_) grows abundantly throughout all upper Egypt. It is a very picturesque tree which, unlike its date-bearing sister, spreads out into numerous limbs or branches, reaching an elevation of about thirty feet. Its wood is more solid than that of the date tree, and was found to be very serviceable for the building of boats, etc. The blossoms are of two kinds, male and female. The fruit, which is developed from the female blossom, grows in large clusters, each fruit attaining the size of a goose's egg, although the nut within the fibrous external envelope is not much bigger than a large almond. The flavor of the nut is peculiarly sweet, resembling our ginger bread. It was eaten both in a ripe and unripe condition--in the latter it has about the texture of cartilage; in the former it is harder, and has been compared to the edible portion of the cocoanut. The date palm is too well known to need any general description. Two kinds, however, flourished--the wild and the cultivated. The wild variety grew from seeds, and often bore an enormous quantity of fruit. Sir G. Wilkinson is authority for the statement that a single bunch has been known to contain between 6,000 and 7,000 dates, and as it is a common thing for a tree to bear from five to twenty-two bunches, the average total is often from 30,000 to 100,000 dates per tree. The fruit is, though, small and of poor quality, and consequently it is not often gathered.