And in this respect they are consistent with the circumstances of the case, like the tales of the Book of Sindibád, from which the frame of the Ten Wazírs was imitated, and in which the Wazírs relate stories showing the depravity and profligacy of women and that no reliance should be placed on their unsupported assertions, and to these the lady opposes equally cogent stories setting forth the wickedness and perfidy of men. Closely resembling the frame-story of the Ten Wazírs, however, is that of a Tamil romance entitled “Alakeswara Kathá,” a copy of which, written on palm leaves, was in the celebrated Mackenzie collection, of which Dr. H. H. Wilson published a descriptive catalogue; it is “a story of the Rájá of Alakepura and his four ministers, who, being falsely accused of violating the sanctity of the inner apartments, vindicate their innocence and disarm the king’s wrath by relating a number of stories.” Judging by the specimen given by Wilson, the well-known tale of the Lost Camel, it seems probable that the ministers’ stories, like those of Bakhtyár, are suited to their own case and illustrate the truth of the adage that “appearances are often deceptive.” Whether in the Siamese collection “Nonthuk Pakkaranam” (referred to in vol. i. p. 191) the stories related by the Princess Kankras to the King of Pataliput (Palibothra), to save her father’s life, are similarly designed, does not appear from Benfey’s notice of the work in his paper in “Orient und Occident,” iii. 171 ff. He says that the title of the book, “Nonthuk Pakkaranam,” is taken from the name of a wise ox, Nonthuk, that plays the principal part in the longest of the tales, which are all apparently translated from the Sanskrit, in which language the title would be Nandaka Prakaranam, the History of Nandaka. Most of the tales related by the wazír Al-Rahwan are not only in themselves entertaining, but are of very considerable importance from the story-comparer’s point of view, since in this group occur Eastern forms of tales which were known in Italy in the 14th century, and some had spread over Europe even earlier. The reader will have seen from Sir R. F. Burton’s notes that not a few of the stories have their parallels or analogues in countries far apart, and it is interesting to find four of them which properly belong to the Eastern texts of the Book of Sindibad, with the frame-story of which that of this group has so close an affinity. _THE ART OF ENLARGING PEARLS.—Vol. I. p. 197._ “Quoth she, I have a bangle; sell it and buy seed pearls with the price; then round them and fashion them into great pearls.” For want of a more suitable place, I shall here reproduce an account of the “Method of making false pearls” (nothing else being meant in the above passage), cited, from Postl. Com. Dict., in vol. xxvi. of “Rees’ Cyclopædia,” London, 1819: