in the details of the different versions—­ probably through its being transmitted orally in some instances.  Thus in the Arabian story, the king is ruined apparently in consequence of no fault of his own; in the Panjabi version, he relinquishes his wealth to a fakir as a pious action; in the Kashmiri and in the romance of Sir Isumbras, the hero loses his wealth as a punishment for his overweening ride, in the legend of St. Eustache, as in the story of Job, the calamities which overtake the Christian convert are designed by Heaven as a trial of his patience and fortitude; while even in the corrupted Tibetan story the ruin of the monarch is reflected in the destruction of the parents of the heroine by a hurricane.  In both the Kashmiri and the Panjabi versions, the father is swallowed by a fish (or an alligator) in re-crossing the river to fetch his second child, in the Tibetan story the wife loses her husband, who is killed by a snake, and having taken one of her children over the river, she is returning for the other when, looking back, she discovers her babe in the jaws of a wolf:  both her children perish:  in the European versions they are carried off by wild beasts and rescued by strangers—­the romance of Sir Isumbras is singular in representing the number of children to be three.  Only in the Arabian story do we find the father carrying his wife and children in safety across the stream, and the latter afterwards lost in the forest.  The Kashmiri and Gesta versions correspond exactly in representing the shipman as seizing the lady because her husband could not pay the passage-money:  in the Arabian she is entrapped in the ship, owned by a Magian, on the pretext that there is on board a woman in labour; in Sir Isumbras she is forcibly “bought” by the Soudan.  She is locked up in a chest by the Magian; sent to rule his country by the Soudan; respectfully treated by the merchant in the Kashmiri story, and, apparently, also by Kandan in the Panjabi legend; in the story of St. Eustache her persecutor dies and she is living in humble circumstances when discovered by her husband.—­I think there is internal evidence, apart from the existence of the Tibetan version, to lead to the conclusion that the story is of Buddhist extraction, and if such be the fact, it furnishes a further example of the indebtedness of Christian hagiology to Buddhist tales and legends.

AL-MALIK AL-ZAHIR AND THE SIXTEEN CAPTAINS OF POLICE.—­Vol.  XII. p. 1.

We must, I think, regard this group of tales as being genuine narratives of the exploits of Egyptian sharpers.  From the days of Herodotus to the present time, Egypt has bred the most expert thieves in the world.  The policemen don’t generally exhibit much ability for coping with the sharpers whose tricks they so well recount; but indeed our home-grown “bobbies” are not particularly quick-witted.

The Thief’s tale.—­Vol.  XII. p. 28.