favourable circumstances, and bears a fruit resembling a date, with a subacid flavour.  The bark is whitish, the branches gracefully curved, the foliage of an ashy grey, more especially on its under surface.  Specially characteristic of Egypt, though not altogether peculiar to it, were the papyrus and the lotus—­the Cyperus papyrus and Nymphaea lotus of botanists.  The papyrus was a tall smooth reed, with a large triangular stalk containing a delicate pith, out of which the Egyptians manufactured their paper.  The fabric was excellent, as is shown by its continuance to the present day, and by the fact that the Greeks and Romans, after long trial, preferred it to parchment.  The lotus was a large white water-lily of exquisite beauty.  Kings offered it to the gods; guests wore it at banquets; architectural forms were modelled upon it; it was employed in the ornamentation of thrones.  Whether its root had the effect on men ascribed to it by Homer may be doubted; but no one ever saw it without recognizing it instantly as “a thing of beauty,” and therefore as “a joy for ever.”

[Illustration:  DOM AND DATE PALMS.]

Nor can Egypt have afforded in ancient times any very exciting amusement to sportsmen.  At the present day gazelles are chased with hawk and hound during the dry season on the broad expanse of the Delta; but anciently the thick population scared off the whole antelope tribe, which was only to be found in the desert region beyond the limits of the alluvium.  Nor can Egypt, in the proper sense of the word, have ever been the home of red-deer, roes, or fallow-deer, of lions, bears, hyaenas, lynxes, or rabbits.  Animals of these classes may occasionally have appeared in the alluvial plain, but they would only be rare visitants driven by hunger from their true habitat in the Libyan or the Arabian uplands.  The crocodile, however, and the hippopotamus were actually hunted by the ancient Egyptians; and they further indulged their love of sport in the pursuits of fowling and fishing.  All kinds of waterfowl are at all seasons abundant in the Nile waters, and especially frequent the pools left by the retiring river—­pelicans, geese, ducks, ibises, cranes, storks, herons, dotterels, kingfishers, and sea-swallows.  Quails also arrive in great numbers in the month of March, though there are no pheasants, snipe, wood-cocks, nor partridges.  Fish are very plentiful in the Nile and the canals derived from it; but there are not many kinds which afford much sport to the fisherman.

Altogether, Egypt is a land of tranquil monotony.  The eye commonly travels either over a waste of waters, or over a green plain unbroken by elevations.  The hills which inclose the Nile valley have level tops, and sides that are bare of trees, or shrubs, or flowers, or even mosses.  The sky is generally cloudless.  No fog or mist enwraps the distance in mystery; no rainstorm sweeps across the scene; no rainbow spans the empyrean; no shadows chase each