Part 21

“Turn their halcyon beaks With every gale and vary of their masters.”

And Marlowe, in his Jew of Malta (i. 1):--

“But now, how stands the wind? Into what corner peers my halcyon bill?”

THE PELICAN.

The fable of the Pelican “in her piety, vulning herself,” as it is heraldically described--is so well known, as hardly to be worth mentioning, even to contradict it. In the first place, the heraldic bird is as unlike the real one, as it is possible to be; but the legend seems to have had its origin in Egypt, where the vulture was credited with this extraordinary behaviour, and this bird is decidedly more in accordance with the heraldic ideal. Du Bartas, singing of “Charitable birds,” praises equally the Stork and the Pelican:--

“The Stork, still eyeing her deer Thessalie, The Pelican comforteth cheerfully: Prayse-worthy Payer; which pure examples yield Of faithfull Father, and Officious Childe: Th’ one quites (in time) her Parents love exceeding, From whom shee had her birth and tender breeding; Not onely brooding under her warm brest Their age-chill’d bodies bed-rid in the nest; Nor only bearing them upon her back Through th’ empty Aire, when their own wings they lack; But also, sparing (This let Children note) Her daintiest food from her own hungry throat, To feed at home her feeble Parents, held From forraging, with heavy Gyves of Eld. The other, kindly, for her tender Brood Tears her own bowells, trilleth-out her blood, To heal her young, and in a wondrous sort, Unto her Children doth her life transport: For finding them by som fell Serpent slain, She rends her brest, and doth upon them rain Her vitall humour; whence recovering heat, They by her death, another life do get.”

THE TROCHILUS.

This bird, as described by Aristotle, and others, is of a peculiar turn of mind:--“When the Crocodile gapes, the trochilus flies into its mouth to cleanse its teeth; in this process the trochilus procures food, and the other perceives it, and does not injure it; when the Crocodile wishes the trochilus to leave, it moves its neck that it may not bite the bird.”

Giovanni Leone--before quoted--says, respecting this bird:--“As we sayled further we saw great numbers of crocodiles upon the banks of the ilands in the midst of Nilus lye baking them in the sunne with their jawes wide open, whereinto certaine little birds about the bignesse of a thrush entering, came flying forth againe presently after. The occasion whereof was told me to be this: the crocodiles by reason of their continuall devouring beasts and fishes have certaine pieces of flesh sticking fast betweene their forked teeth, which flesh being putrified, breedeth a kind of worme, wherewith they are cruelly tormented; wherefor the said birds flying about, and seeing the wormes enter into the Crocodile’s jaws to satisfie their hunger thereon, but the Crocodile perceiving himselfe freede from the wormes of his teeth, offereth to shut his mouth, and to devour the little bird that did him so good a turne, but being hindred from his ungratefull attempt by a pricke which groweth upon the bird’s head, hee is constrayned to open his jawes, and to let her depart.”

Du Bartas gives another colour to the behaviour of the Trochilus:--

“The Wren, who seeing (prest with sleep’s desire) Nile’s poys’ny Pirate press the slimy shoar, Suddenly coms, and, hopping him before, Into his mouth he skips, his teeth he pickles, Clenseth his palate, and his throat so tickles, That, charm’d with pleasure, the dull Serpent gapes. Wider and wider, with his ugly chaps: Then, like a shaft, th’ Ichneumon instantly Into the Tyrants greedy gorge doth fly, And feeds upon that Glutton, for whose Riot, All Nile’s fat margents scarce could furnish diet.”

WOOLLY HENS.

Sir John Maundeville saw in “the kingdome named Mancy, which is the best kingdome of the worlde--(Manzi, that part of China south of the river Hoang-ho) whyte hennes, and they beare no feathers, but woll as shepe doe in our lande.”

TWO-HEADED WILD GEESE.

Near the land of the Cynocephali or dog-headed men, there were many islands, and, “Also in this yle, and in many yles thereabout are many wyld geese with two heads.” But these were not the only extraordinary breed of wild geese, extant.

“As the wise Wilde-geese, when they over-soar Cicilian mounts, within their bills do bear, A pebble stone both day and night: for fear Lest ravenous Eagles of the North descry Their Armies passage, by their Cackling Cry.”

Aristotle mentions the Crane as another stone-bearing bird:--“Among birds, as it was previously remarked, the Crane migrates from one extremity of the earth to the other, and they fly against the wind. As for the story of the stone, it is a fiction, for they say that they carry a stone as ballast, which is useful as a touchstone for gold, after they have vomited it up.”

FOUR-FOOTED DUCK.

Gesner describes a four-footed duck, which he says is like the English puffin, except in the number of its feet: but Aldrovandus “out-Herods Herod” when he gives us “A monstrous Cock with Serpent’s tail.”

If we can believe Pliny, there are places where certain birds are never found:--“With reference to the departure of birds, the owlet, too, is said to lie concealed for a few days. No birds of this last kind are to be found in the island of Crete, and if any are imported thither, they immediately die. Indeed, this is a remarkable distinction made by Nature; for she denies to certain places, as it were, certain kinds of fruits and shrubs, and of animals as well;...

“Rhodes possesses no Eagles. In Italy, beyond the Padus, there is, near the Alps, a lake known by the name of Larius, beautifully situate amid a country covered with shrubs; and yet this lake is never visited by storks, nor, indeed, are they ever known to come within eight miles of it; whilst on the other hand, in the neighbouring territory of the Montres, there are immense flocks of magpies and jackdaws, the only bird that is guilty of stealing gold and silver, a very singular propensity.

“It is said that in the territory of Tarentum, the woodpecker of Mars is never found. It is only lately, too, and that but very rarely, that various kinds of pies have begun to be seen in the districts that lie between the Apennines, and the City; birds which are known by the name of Variæ, and are remarkable for the length of the tail. It is a peculiarity of this bird, that it becomes bald every year at the time of sowing rape. The partridge does not fly beyond the frontiers of Bœotia, into Attica; nor does any bird, in the island in the Euxine in which Achilles was buried, enter the temple there consecrated to him.

“In the territory of Fidenæ, in the vicinity of the City, the storks have no young, nor do they build nests; but vast numbers of ring-doves arrive from beyond sea every year in the district of Volaterræ. At Rome, neither flies, nor dogs ever enter the temple of Hercules in the Cattle Market.”...

FISH.

Terrestrial and Aerial animals were far more familiar to the Ancients than were the inhabitants of the vast Ocean, and not knowing much about them, their habits and ways, took “omne ignotum pro magnifico.”

We have seen the union of Man and Beast, and Man and Bird; and Man and Fish was just as common, and perhaps more ancient than either of the former--for Berosus, the Chaldean historian, gives us an account of Oannes, or Hea, who corresponded to the Greek Cronos, who is identified with the fish-headed god so often represented on the sculptures from Nimroud, and of whom, clay figures have been found at Nimroud and Khorsabad, as well as numerous representations on seals and gems.

Of this mysterious union of Man and Fish, Berosus says:--“In the beginning there were in Babylon a great number of men of various races, who had colonised Chaldea. They lived without laws, after the manner of animals. But in the first year there appeared coming out of the Erythrian Sea (Persian Gulf) on the coast where it borders Babylonia, an animal endowed with reason, named Oannes. He had all the body of a fish, but below the head of the fish another head, which was that of a man; also the feet of a man, which came out of its fish’s tail. He had a human voice, and its image is preserved to this day. This animal passed the day time among men, taking no nourishment. It taught them the use of letters, of sciences, and of arts of every kind; the rules for the foundation of towns, and the building of temples, the principles of laws, and geometry, the sowing of seeds, and the harvest; in one word, it gave to men all that conduced to the enjoyment of life. Since that time nothing excellent has been invented. At the time of sunset, this monster Oannes threw itself into the sea, and passed the night beneath the waves, for it was amphibious. He wrote a book upon the beginning of all things, and of Civilisation, which he left to mankind.”

Helladice quotes the same story, and calls the composite being Oes; while another writer, Hyginus, calls him Euahanes. M. Lenormant thinks that it is evident that this latter name is more correct than Oannes, for it points to one of the Akkadian names of Hea--“Hea-Khan,” Hea, the fish--and must be identified with the fish-God in the illustration.