52 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



tion I can find or imagine for the origin of this so persis- 

 tent and popular error in ornithology is that when the 

 bird is brooding or resting it usually stretches its head 

 and neck along the ground, and is likely to keep this pros- 

 trate position in cautious stillness as long as it thinks it 

 has not been observed by whatever it fears. The futile 

 trick of hiding its head alone has been attributed to var- 

 ious other birds equally innocent. 



Ostriches in ancient times roamed the deserts of the 

 East from the Atlas to the Indus, and they came to hold 

 a very sinister position in the estimation of the early in- 

 habitants of Mesopotamia, as we learn from the seals and 

 tablets of Babylonia. There the eagle had become the 

 type of the principle of Good in the universe, as is else- 

 where described ; and a composite monster, to which the 

 general term "dragon" is applied, represented the prin- 

 ciple of Evil. The earliest rude conception of this 

 monster gave it a beast's body (sometimes a crocodile's 

 but usually a lion's), always with a bird's wings, tail, etc. 

 "From conceiving of the dragon as a monster having a 

 bird's head as well as wings and tail, and feathers over 

 the body, the transition," as Dr. Ward 23 remarks, "was 

 not difficult to regard it entirely as a -bird. But for this 

 the favorite form was that of an ostrich ... the largest 

 bird known, a mysterious inhabitant of the deserts, swift 

 to escape and dangerous to attack. No other bird was 

 so aptly the emblem of power for mischief. . . . Ac- 

 cordingly, in the period of about the eighth to the seventh 

 centuries, B. C, the contest of Marduk, representing 

 Good in the form of a human hero or sometimes as an 

 eagle, with an ostrich, or often a pair of them, repre- 

 senting the evil demon Tiamat, was a favorite subject 



