and the gleam of gold in relief against the deep-toned blue and red decoration,-is exceedingly rich.

Another mode of decorating a ceiling is by nailing thin strips of wood on the planks that constitute the roof, in a geometrical

design, and covering the whole with a thin surface of plaster, on which various arabesque and floral ornaments are then squeezed while the material is soft, and the whole is then painted and gilt.

The cut, fig. 67, represents a ceiling in the St. Maurice collection, acquired by the South Kensington Museum. The design is raised by means of strips of wood about half an inch thick, and these strips are gilt, with lines of red to shade the gold; the intervening arabesques are in plaster, gilt, with edges of red and blue. The general effect is very handsome. Sometimes the ceilings are made in this appliqué style with no decoration in the interstices. Such is the example (fig. 65), which comes from a comparatively modern and poor class of room. The strips of wood are nailed on the planks in a geometrical pattern, with a few bosses to form centres, and the whole is tinted with red ochre. This and the preceding ceiling (fig. 67) belonged to meshrebīyas, and the style was only employed for ceilings of small size, where no heavy beams were required, such as those over meshrebiyas and over the durkā‘as of small rooms. It should be noticed that a somewhat similar style of appliqué work is used for the bases, as well as for the ceilings, of meshrebiyas. In the illustration (fig. 12), the corbelling of the nearest meshrebiya is covered with rosettes and stalactites, all of which are first cut out with a chisel and fret-saw, and then nailed on to the window. Fret-work is also used for the pendentive eave which surmounts all good meshrebiyas.

The furniture of a Mohammadan house is so limited, that it is not difficult to sum up the chief wooden objects. An ordinary room in Cairo contains,-beside such structural wood-work as the lattice-window and the panelled wall-cupboard, and the simple shelf that runs round above the latter, supported by common gallows-brackets,—nothing but divans, supported on a frame, which is not ornamented, and perhaps a little table (kursy), and a desk for the Koran. The kursy (which must not be confounded with the lectern of mosques, also called Kursy) is generally of inlaid ivory or mother-of-pearl, but some are of turned wood, as in the engraving fig. 66, which is from a table preserved in the Cairo Museum. Portions of the stalactites are broken off, but the design is sufficiently preserved for us to judge of the effect, which is heavy, and

inferior to the mother-of-pearl tables with which we are more familiar. The reading-desk is of the crossed-leg or camp-stool order, and is generally inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which covers the greater part of the surface of the table, and is fixed with glue. The ordinary Cairo patterns are very simple, and consist in stars and geometrical designs; but the Syrian tables, of the same shape and material, are carved with figures on the motherof-pearl, and touched with red and green paint. In both kinds the mother-of-pearl is set off by black wedge-shaped pieces of horn or bituminous composition. Rarer objects are the thrones or chairs of carved and lattice-work, used formerly for a bride's robes. A seat of lattice-work (dikka) also stands in the entrance of many houses for the door-keeper.

The age of the wood-work, other than carved, is not easy to determine. The meshrebiyas, exposed to the weather, do not seem able to last very long, and we shall be probably right in assuming none of them to be older than the seventeenth century. The more elaborate and squarer form of meshrebiya, used in mosques, is of course older than this, and may date from the fourteenth century. The ceilings vary in date with the mosques or houses to which they belong, but they are not found in mosques earlier than the fourteenth century, and no Cairo houses can be ascribed with certainty to even that period.