24 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



lawful to kill or eat such a bird, which indicates a rela- 

 tion to totemism. Thus, as Powers 19 asserts, the Mono 

 Indians of the Sierra Nevada, never kill their sacred black 

 eagles, but pluck out the feathers of those that die and 

 wear them on their heads. "When they succeed in cap- 

 turing a young one, after a fortnight the village makes a 

 great jubilation. ,, Some Eskimos will not eat gulls' 

 eggs, which make men old and decrepit. 



Whatever tradition or superstition or other motive 

 affected the choice of any bird as a tribal totem, or en- 

 dowed it with "sacredness," practical considerations were 

 surely influential. It is noticeable that the venerated ibis 

 and hawk in Egypt were useful to the people as devourers 

 of vermin — young crocodiles, poisonous snakes, grain- 

 eating mice and so forth. Storks in Europe and India, 

 and the "unclean" birds of Palestine forbidden to the 

 Jews, were mostly carrion-eaters, and as such were de- 

 sirable street-cleaners in village and camp. A tradition 

 in the ^Lgean island Tenos is that Poseidon — a Greek St. 

 Patrick — sent storks to clear the island of snakes, which 

 originally were numerous there. Australian frontiers- 

 men preserve the big kingfisher, dubbed "laughing- jack- 

 ass," for the same good reason. The wiser men in early 

 communities appreciated this kind of service by birds, 

 and added a religious sanction to their admonition that 

 such servants of mankind should not be killed. It was the 

 primitive movement toward bird-protection, which, by 

 the way, was first applied in this country to the scaveng- 

 ing turkey-buzzards and carrion-crows of the Southern 

 States. 



As for the smaller birds, where special regard was 

 paid them it was owing, apart from the natural humane 

 admiration and enjoyment of these pretty creatures, to 



