“Only one,” replied the old Egyptian--“a girl. We ‘isolated’ her.” “Good!” said the Englishman. “How did you do it?” The native smiled and drew his finger across his throat. “With a knife,” he said. The Egyptian’s idea of justice is peculiar; and although the better class native judges are usually excellent exponents of the law, instances are often to be noticed of an absurdly childish reasoning. A short time ago two natives were had up before the courts on the charge of having carried firearms without licenses. In passing sentence the native judge fined one of the offenders one hundred piastres and the other fifty piastres. An English official asked the Judge why he had not given the same punishment to both men. “Well, you see,” said the Egyptian, “one of the guns was longer than the other.” So much has been written in regard to native superstitions that little need here be said upon the subject. I cannot refrain, however, from recording one story dealing with this phase of Egyptian life. A native _effendi_, a man of the educated classes, found himself in trouble one morning at the Zoological Gardens at Cairo owing to the fact that he had been observed by one of the keepers to climb the railings surrounding the giraffes’ compound and to open and shut an umbrella several times, apparently for the purpose of frightening one of the animals. When he was closely questioned as to his actions he stated that he had wished to shade the giraffe’s neck from the sun, in order that he might have the pleasure of watching the creature shrink to the size of a mouse, a phenomenon which he had been told would be observed if a shadow were cast upon that part of its anatomy at noon. Another native, who had been watching a chimpanzee with awful interest for some time, asked the keeper what manner of diet was provided for animals of that kind. The keeper having told him, the visitor smiled, and, taking his arm, drew him aside. “Now that nobody can hear what we are saying,” he whispered, “tell me truly: do you not feed them on the flesh of criminals who die in the city prisons?” As a deterrent to crime it might have been as well had the keeper admitted that such was the case. Egyptians will believe stories of the wildest kind, which in Europe only a child would accept. For example, when the Aswân Dam was built, many natives declared that the English had only undertaken the work in order to convey the water of the Nile in pipes to England for the benefit of the British farmer. Many of the peasants believe that England is inhabited solely by men who spend one half of the year in digging through perpetual ice and snow for the gold which lies below, and the other half of the year in spending the proceeds in Egypt, which is obviously the hub of the universe.