In the case of the _jinni_ of Arabia the connection with trees is more clearly demonstrable. They were regarded as hairy monsters, more like beasts than men, haunting dense, untrodden thickets and endowed with the power of assuming various shapes. Such an uncouth and alarming presentment may well have arisen from their presumed association with places, which, as the natural lairs of dangerous animals, were perilous to man, but “the association of certain kinds of _jinni_ with trees must in many cases be regarded as primary, the trees themselves being conceived as animated demoniac beings.”[116] They have apparently had a longer career than most demons of the class, for their existence is still firmly believed in by certain Bedouins, who asseverate that they have actually seen them. Mr. Theodore Bent found the same superstitious dread of the _jinni_ both in the Hadramaut and in Dhofar. They are described as semi-divine spirits, who live by rocks near the streams, under trees, or in the lakes. Mr. Bent could not induce the Bedouins of his escort to gather a certain water-plant for fear of offending the _jinn_ of the lake. In fact in the Gara Mountains the fear of the _jinni_, and the skill of certain magicians in keeping them friendly, appear to constitute the only tangible forms of religion.[117] Under the word sĕīrīm, hairy monsters, E.V. “satyrs” and “devils,” the Bible makes occasional mention of mythical creatures who were presumably related to the Arabian _jinni_.[118] They are represented as frequenting waste-places, forsaken by man and given over to nettles and brambles. In one passage the word is used of the heathen gods of Canaan,[119] whose close association with trees has already been noticed. The fantastic monsters of the Egyptian desert, thought to appear only at the moment when the minor functions assigned to them had to be performed, and at other times to conceal themselves in inanimate objects, are represented as sometimes dwelling in trees or in stakes planted in the ground.[120] Their assumed complete incorporation in such objects is proved by the expressive term used by the Egyptians—the objects “ate them up.” Their existence and their unfriendliness to man were firmly believed in. The shepherd feared them for his flock, the hunter for himself. Similar beasts roamed through the Egyptian Hades and threatened the wayfaring spirits of the dead. These fragmentary evidences are important as casting a side-light on the parallel superstitions of the Aryan races, amongst which, as we shall see, the belief in wood-demons and tree-spirits was almost universal.