[262] "The shell called Siiankos, common to India, Africa, and the Mediterranean, and still used in many parts as a trumpet for blowing alarms or giving signals: it sends forth a deep and hollow sound."— Pennant.
[263] "The finest ornament for the horses is made of six large flying tassels of long white hair, taken out of the tails of wild oxen, that are to be found in some places of the Indies."—Thevenot.
[264] "The angel Israfll, who has the most melodious voice of all God's creatures."—Sale.
[265] "In this thicket upon the banks of the Jordan several sorts of wild beasts are wont to harbor themselves, whose being washed out of the covert by the overflowings of the river, gave occasion to that allusion of Jeremiah, he shall come up like a lion from the smelling of Jordan."—Maundrell's "Aleppo."
[266] "This wind (the Samoor) so softens the strings of lutes, that they can never be tuned while it lasts."—Stephen's Persia.
[267] "One of the greatest curiosities found in the Persian Gulf is a fish which the English call Star-fish. It is circular, and at night very luminous, resembling the full moon surrounded by rays."—Mirza Abu Taleb.
[268] Some naturalists have imagined that amber is a concretion of the tears of birds.—See Trevoux, Chambers.
[269] "The bay Kieselarke, which is otherwise called the Golden Bay, the sand whereof shines as fire."—Struy.
[270] "The application of whips or rods."—Dubois.
[271] Kempfer mentions such an officer among the attendants of the King of Persia, and calls him "formae corporis estimator." His business was, at stated periods, to measure the ladies of the Haram by a sort of regulation-girdle whose limits it was not thought graceful to exceed. If any of them outgrew this standard of shape, they were reduced by abstinence till they came within proper bounds.