the How of water is turned into these in turn. Upon the day on which any given ‘seggia’ is to be used the owners of the various gardens situated beside it assemble and, repairing to a point overlooking the gardens, proceed to divide the flow of water between them.
“So precious is the liquid that even a few moments more or less in the period of its flow into a garden is of considerable importance; the Shawia therefore mistrust the employment of modern watches, whose rate can be dishonestly adjusted, as a means of measuring the time for which each owner is entitled to the flow of the canal.
“Instead, they make use of a system of measuring time which must be of very great antiquity, and has probably per- sisted in this land of survivals for countless generations in company with other strange customs of the Shawia.
“A member of the village council accompanies the land- owners, bringing with him a large earthen bowl, or metal pail, of water, and a small copper bowl, the bottom of which is perforated with a very minute hole; at the moment when the mud wall of the ‘seggia’ is cut through and the water allowed to flow into the first garden the councillor carefully places the perforated bowl, the property of the village council, and therefore the legal measure, upon the water in the pail, watching carefully for it to sink, which it will do in about fifteen minutes, and refloating it again immediately it does so, Thus each landowner is entitled to three, four, six, or eight, as the case may be, sinkings of the copper bowl rather than to any given number of actual hours or portions of an hour, and as the time approaches when the flow of water into a garden is to cease, a neighbor in the little group of landowners will shout to an assistant in his garden below to be ready upon the instant to cut open an inlct into his land in the side of the ‘seggia’ as soon as the bowl has sunk for the last time in the series allotted to his friend, who at that moment will cry out to a man in his garden to stem the flow of water he has been receiving by filling up with mud the hole through which it has been running.
“Each landowner being present in person, and the fact that
