ORIENTALS WASHING HANDS.

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When the flocks are to be shorn, they are driven into walled enclosures, on account of a belief that the sweating and evaporation which they undergo there, improve the quality of the wool. In poorer villages when flocks are very small, they are generally taken care of by the women and children. At night they drive them home and fold them in enclosures attached to their huts, as seen in the engraving. These pens or cotes also serve as a place for young calves, and like the huts are built of very light materials. They are seldom anything else than bamboo wicker-work, with the interstices sometimes filled with mortar. Our cut represents an Arab village, and may be considered a very good specimen of the architecture of a people just emerging from a migratory to a settled and civilized life.

WITH the people of the East, especially those of Palestine and Persia, and throughout the whole region once known as Judea, cleanliness is regarded as one of the cardinal virtues; and with the Mahometans in general, and the Turks in particular, personal cleanliness is made a part of their religion. It is enjoined upon them in the Koran as one of the most important duties, and the Mahometans like the Jews are taught to believe that impurity of the body is so offensive in the sight of Deity that it will be punished with spiritual débasement.

The bath is almost universally used daily in the East, and where this luxury is denied, as is the case in the desert regions, the people have frequent recourse to ablutions of the extremities.

Oriental ewer and basin.

The Orientals never wash their hands in water standing in the basin, but always, if possible, have it poured upon them from an

wer held by a second person, as shown in the cut. This mode is doubtless much more refreshing and cleanly than the one used by us, and the Europeans in general. In the East, the basin and ewer are generally made of tinned copper. The former has a division midway the top and bottom, raised in the centre and perforated with holes like a colander, so that the defiled water, passing from the hands, is concealed by this perforated covering. The ewer has a long spout and narrow neck, with a cover, as represented in the second cut. When the master wishes to wash his hands, a servant approaches with the ewer in his right hand and the basin in his left; and so tenacious are the Orientals in the observance of this custom, that when a second person is wanting, they will wash in the inconvenient manner of taking up and setting down the ewer frequently, to pour water on their hands. This custom, now so prevalent in the East, was equally so at a very remote period. In the Scripture Book of second Kings, iii. 11, this custom is alluded to in the case of Elijah: "And one of the king of Israel's servants answered and said, Here is Elisha the son of Shaphat, which poured water on the hands of Elijah." "The incident here mentioned occurred nearly nine hundred years anterior to our era.

SHAVING THE HEAD.

THE tonsorial business in the East is quite different from what it is with us, for there, instead of shaving off the beard and dressing and curling the long locks of hair, they dress and curl the beard, and frequently shave the head, as seen in the engraving. A fine beard, carefully attended to, is considered one of the most valuable of the personal ornaments of the males of the East, and they usually spend more time and care in the cultivation of this natural beauty, than in any other decoration of their persons.

A custom is still prevalent among many oriental nations, of shaving the head as a sign of mourning. The origin of this custom is very remote, for we find it recorded of Job that when he heard of the desolation of his house he "arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head."

This custom was prevalent with the Jews, though it was interdicted among the priests. Mahomet forbade the habit, yet his injunctions are disregarded. The ancient Greeks testified their

grief in this manner, and sometimes laid their hair upon the body of the deceased to be buried or burnt with it, and sometimes it was simply laid upon the grave. When men of high station in the state or army died, it was not unusual for the whole population of cities to be shaved.

Purchas gives an account, on the authority of Peter Covillan, of an existing custom in Abyssinia, of an analogous character. The narrative relates to a public mourning for the death of their king. The party alluded to had just received the intelligence. "And because," says he, "it is the fashion of this country, when their friends die, to shave their heads, and not their beards, and to cloath themselves in black apparell, wee beganne to shave one another's head, and while wee were doing this, in came they which brought us our dinner, who, when they saw this, they set down the meate upon the ground, and ran to tell it unto Prete, who suddenly sent two friars unto us, to understand what had fallen out. The ambassadeur could not answer him for the great