themselves with dance and song. It is a rural picnic. Under the hill is a railway tunnel with a train about to enter, and on the summit is Buddha in a contemplative attitude brooding over the whole, but owing to the faulty perspective of the drawing, it is impossible to state whether Buddha is contemplating the scene of merriment, or brooding over the curious handiwork of the designer. One image of Buddha in a sitting posture occupies the place of honour at the far end of the temple, facing the door. The number of smaller images varies considerably from half a dozen to several hundreds. In one of the temples in the old capital of Ayuthia there are over twenty thousand. They are covered all over with gold-leaf, and the eyes of the larger ones are made of mother-of-pearl. Some of the most barbarous laws in the Siamese civil code relate to the profanation of idols. They are never enforced now, and any need for them must at any time have been very small. Section 48 of the above code is: "If a thief steal an image of Buddha, and use various devices for removing its ornaments, such as washing or smelting, let him be put into a furnace and be treated in exactly the same way as he treated the image, and thus pay for his wickedness." Section 49 says, "If any thief strip a Buddha image of its gold or gilding, let him be taken to a public square and a red-hot iron rubbed over him till he is stripped of his skin, as he stripped the image of its gold, and thus pay for his crime. If a thief scratch the gold from a Buddha image, pagoda, or temple, or sacred tree, let his fingers be cut off." Heaped round the altar are the offerings of the merit-makers,--old bottles, Birmingham-made vases, clocks, china, saucers, joss-sticks, looking-glasses, bits of coloured glass, and many other articles of equally trivial value. In addition to these things for the adornment of the altar or the use of the temple, the priests also receive food, clothes, money, mosquito netting, boats and small pieces of native furniture. After a big alms-giving day the interior of the sacred pile looks something like an auction room awaiting the commencement of a sale.