it is “a story of the Raja of Alakespura and his four ministers, who, being falsely accused of violating the sanctity of the inner apartments, vindicate their innocence and disarm the king’s wrath by relating a number of stories.”  Judging by the specimen given by Wilson, the well-known tale of the Lost Camel, it seems probable that the ministers’ stories, like those of Bakhtyar, are suited to their own case and illustrate the truth of the adage that “appearances are often deceptive.”  Whether in the Siamese collection “Nonthuk Pakkaranam” (referred to in vol. i. p. 127) the stories related by the Princess Kankras to the King of Pataliput (Palibothra), to save her father’s life, are similarly designed, does not appear from Benfey’s notice of the work in his paper in “Orient and Occident,” iii. 171 ff.  He says that the title of the book, “Nonthuk Pakkaranam,” is taken from the name of a wise ox, Nonthuk, that plays the principal part in the longest of the tales, which are all apparently translated from the Sanskrit, in which language the title would be Nandaka Prakaranam, the History of Nandaka.

Most of the tales related by the wazir Al-Rahwan are not only in themselves entertaining, but are of very considerable importance from the story-comparer’s point of view, since in this group occur Eastern forms of tales which were known in Italy in the 14th century, and some had spread over Europe even earlier.  The reader will have seen from Sir R. F. Burton’s notes that not a few of the stories have their parallels or analogues in countries far apart, and it is interesting to find four of them which properly belong to the Eastern texts of the Book of Sindibad, with the frame-story of which that of this group has so close an affinity.

The art of ENGARGING pearls.—­Vol.  XI. p.131.

“Quoth she, I have a bangle; sell it and buy seed pearls with the
                     price; then round them
              and fashion them into great pearls.”

For want of a more suitable place, I shall here reproduce an account of the “Method of making false pearls” (nothing else being meant in the above passage), cited, from Post.  Com.  Dict.  In vol. xxvi.  Of Rees’ Cyclopaedia,” London, 1819: 

“Take of thrice distilled vinegar two pounds, Venice turpentine one pound, mix them together into a mass and put them into a cucurbit, fit a head and receiver to it, and after you have luted the joints set it when dry on a sand furnace, to distil the vinegar from it; do not give it too much heat, lest the stuff swell up.  After this put the vinegar into another glass cucurbit in which there is a quantity of seed pearls wrapped in a piece of thin silk, but so as not to touch the vinegar; put a cover or head upon the cucurbit, lute it well and put it in bal.  Mariae, where you may let it remain a fortnight.  The heat of the balneum will raise the fumes of the vinegar, and they will soften the pearls in the silk