TEA VELLEES NE'ER DO LIE? 335 



had he read the above fishy discourse, and also the 

 following among many other strange anecdotes 

 which are published regarding the ' denizens of the 

 deep/ 



An Eastern traveller tells us that, ' in a certain river 

 whose waters flow from Mount Caucasus into the 

 Euxine, there arrives every year a great quantity of 

 fish/ This information not being particularly novel 

 in regard to most rivers, will fail to excite surpri.se 

 in the mind of the reader. A different result, how- 

 ever, will follow when he hears that, according to 

 Abon-el-Cassim, ' The people cut off all the flesh on 

 one side of those inhabitants of the deep, and let 

 them go. Well, the year following,' as this veracious 

 writer avers, ' the same creatures return and offer 

 the other side, which they had preserved untouched ; 

 it is then discovered that new flesh has replaced the 

 old!' 



This account reminds us of the tale of the travel- 

 ler who reported that he had seen a cabbage, under 

 whose leaves a whole regiment of soldiers were shel- 

 tered from a shower of rain. Another, who was no 

 traveller (but the wiser man), said he had passed by 

 a place where there were four hundred braziers mak- 

 ing a cauldron two hundred within, and two hun- 

 dred without beating the nails in. The traveller, 

 asking for what use that huge cauldron was, he 

 told him, 'Sir, it was to boil your cabbage!" A 

 wittily severe, but deserved rebuke. 



