EXTRACTS. 431 



If you dream that you are lying side by side with a lion, it 

 proves that you have nothing to fear from your enemies. 



To eat the head of a lion is to become the chief man of the 

 State. 



If a pregnant woman dreams she is holding a lion on her 

 knees, she will assuredly be delivered of a male child. 



Don't let your animals drink from a still pool after a lion, if 

 they do, they will commence to grow thin, and finally become 

 crazy. 



The sound of a tambour made of lion's skin, will make a 

 horse ill. 



And among all the Arabs, the greatest amulets, and of most 

 sovereign power, are those made of hair or nails of a lion. 



Extract from the book of Kazourni. entitled Adiaib el Makh- 

 loukat. 



The marvels of creation. 



The lion is the strongest, boldest, and most terrible of all the 

 creatures of God. His creator has endowed him with an enor- 

 mous head, a rounded face, large teeth, sharp nails, immense 

 arms, a broad chest and a lithe body, and his voice is like the 

 voice of the sea. No animal can resist him, and none dare 

 attack him. 



They say he never eats other beasts of prey, and that when 

 he kills an animal, he eats the heart and leaves the rest. He is 

 too noble and proud to return to a victim of which he has once 

 tasted. He loves the singing of voices, and the sound of sweet 

 instruments. 



If in the night he sees a light, he marches straight towards it, 

 and then his spirit seems to be quieted, and he becomes less quick 

 in his movements. 



It has been remarked that he will not harm those who pros- 

 trate themselves before him. When he has eaten flesh, he seeks 

 salt to aid his digestion. There be some men who say that when 

 he is ill, he eats a monkey to cure himself as with a purge. The 

 lion has always a fever, and it is from this fact that they call a 

 fever da-el-acad, the lion sickness 



When the lion is wounded in the foot by arrows, he eats gla- 

 diole in order to make the arrow-heads come out of the wound. 



