Z 6 birds in legend 



masters. In Venezuela and Trinidad the groan-like cries 

 of the nocturnal, cave-dwelling guacharos are thought 

 to be the wailing of ghosts compelled to stay in their 

 caverns in order to expiate their sins. Even now, the 

 Turks maintain that the dusky shearwaters that daily 

 travel in mysterious flocks up and down the Bosphorus 

 are animated by condemned human souls. 



By way of the ancestral traditions sketched above, 

 arise those "sacred animals" constantly mentioned in 

 accounts of ancient or backward peoples. Various birds 

 were assigned to the deities and heroes of Egyptian and 

 Pagan mythology — the eagle to Jove, goose and later the 

 peacock to Juno, the little owl to Minerva, and so on ; but 

 to call these companions "sacred" is a bad use of the term, 

 for there was little or nothing consecrate in these ascrip- 

 tions, and if in any case worship was addressed to the 

 deity, its animal companion was hardly included in the 

 reverential thought of the celebrant. 



It is conceivable that such ascriptions as these are the 

 refined relics of earlier superstitions held by primitive 

 folk everywhere in regard to such birds of their territory 

 as appealed to their imaginations because of one or an- 

 other notable trait. Ethnological and zoological books 

 abound in instances, which it would be tedious to catalog, 

 and several examples appear elsewhere in this book. A 

 single, rather remarkable one, that of the South African 

 ground-hornbill or bromvogel, will suffice to illustrate 

 the point here. I choose, among several available, the 

 account given by Layard, 15 one of the early naturalist- 

 explorers in southern Africa : 



The Fingoes seem to attach some superstitious veneration to 

 the ground-hornbills and object to their being shot in the 

 neighborhood of their dwellings, lest they should lose their 



