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Page 83.the locusts were heard from the thickets, on the plain of Catoul.

These insects are of the same species with the τιττιξ of the Greeks, and the cicada of the Latins. The locusts are mentioned in Pliny, b. 11. 29. They were so called from loco usto, because the havoc they made wherever they passed left behind the appearance of a place desolated by fire. How could then the commentators of Vathek say that they are called locusts, from their having been so denominated by the first English settlers in America?


Page 87.Vathek—with two little pages.

"All the pages of the seraglio are sons of Christians made slaves in time of war, in their most tender age. The incursions of robbers in the confines of Circassia, afford the means of supplying the seraglio, even in times of peace." Habesci's State of the Ottoman Empire, p. 157. That the pages here mentioned were Circassians, appears from the description of their complexion:—more fair than the enamel of Franguistan.


Page 87.Confectioners and cooks.

What their precise number might have been