which is almost identical with the well-known story in the introduction to the Arabian Nights. The original is perhaps found in the Kathá Sarit Ságara, section seventh, to the following effect: Two young Bráhmans travelling are benighted in a forest, and take up their lodging in a tree near a lake. Early in the night a number of people come from the water, and having made preparations for an entertainment retire; a Yaksha (or genie) then comes out of the lake with his two wives, and spends the night there; when he and one of his wives are asleep, the other, seeing the youths, invites them to approach her, and, to encourage them, shows them a hundred rings received from former gallants, notwithstanding her husband's precautions, who keeps her locked up in a chest at the bottom of the lake. The Hindū story-teller is more moral than the Arab: the youths reject her advances; she wakes the Yaksha, who is going to put them to death, but the rings are produced in evidence against the unfaithful wife, and she is turned away with the loss of her nose.—The story is repeated in the next section with some variation: the lady has ninety and nine rings, and is about to complete the hundred, when her husband, who is Naga (or snake-god) wakes, and consumes the guilty pair with fire from his mouth.—Dr. H. H. Wilson.—There is a variant of this story in the Persian romance of Hatim Taï (a pre-Islamite chieftain, renowned throughout the East for his unbounded generosity and liberality): A king, on a hunting excursion, loses his way and is separated from his attendants; he comes to a beautiful garden, in which is a palace, and an artificial lake, sits down, and, as he is performing his ablutions, catches hold of an iron chain in the water, pulls it towards him, and behold, it is attached to a chest, which opens, and discovers a woman of surpassing beauty. After conversing with her, the king takes a ring from his finger and offers it to her as a memento, but she tells him that she has already a string of rings, of which she cannot tell the number, nor can she recollect which lover gave her a particular ring.—Forbes says there is a similar tale in Nakhshabī, near the beginning, but I have failed to find it in that work.