once or twice they readily return to their natural habits, and prefer a free life to the company of man. I am doing my best to secure one of these partridge-tamers for the Emperor, so as to introduce the art into our country. Although I have not seen with my own eyes this system in practice, yet its existence is established by witnesses so numerous and credible, that I place the same reliance on my ears that I should on my eyes. The same may be said of the following anecdote, which is here so commonly reported and so universally admitted, that any one, who ventures to throw doubt upon it, is thought an ignoramus. Those who come hither from Egypt, as many do every day, uniformly declare, that in that country eggs are not put under hens to be hatched in our fashion, but that in spring a sort of vast oven is made out of a big dunghill by certain men who carry on the trade. To this the whole neighbourhood far and wide bring their eggs, which are put in and quickened by the heat of the sun and the rotting dung. In due time the eggs produce chickens, which are distributed by the managers of the business to the people who brought the eggs, not by counting, for that would be too long a process, but by measure. I have less hesitation in telling you this, as there is a passage in Vopiscus quoting a letter of Adrian’s, in which he vents his wrath on the Egyptians in the following words:—‘I wish them nothing worse than to be fed on their own chickens, which are bred in a way too foul to speak of.’[170] I have no doubt this was an old custom among the Egyptians, and I suspect it was on that account that Adrian reproached them with the foulness of their food, inasmuch as they lived on chickens hatched in dunghills. I may, however, be mistaken, and I leave the point for your decision. I will now complete the catalogue of my amusements. I keep several thoroughbred horses, both Syrian, Cilician, Arabian, and Cappadocian, and also baggage camels, so as always to have cattle ready for my return journey. I do this, because I wish the Turks to believe that, having fulfilled all my master’s instructions, I am only waiting for the Sultan’s permission to depart; for this I have now been pressing for a long time past in very urgent terms, the truth being that, in consequence of their present discords and the civil war between the brothers, I do not despair of negotiating a peace on fair and reasonable terms.