7 6 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



brood and sets up a hideous screaming, which excites the atten- 

 tion of the neighboring storks, which fly to his nest. Seeing the 

 cause of their neighbor's uneasiness, they simultaneously com- 

 mence pecking the hen, and soon deprive her of life, supposing 

 these spurious young ones to be the produce of her conjugal 

 infidelity. The male bird in the meantime appears melancholy, 

 though he seems to conceive she justly merited her fate." 



In Goldsmith's day such contributions to foreign 

 zoology were common. Even the so-called scientific men of 

 early Renaissance times indulged in the story-teller's joy. 

 Albertus Magnus asserted that the sea-eagle and the 

 osprey swam with one foot, which was webbed, and cap- 

 tured prey with the other that was armed with talons. 

 Aldrovandus backed him up, and everybody accepted the 

 statement until Linnaeus laughed them out of it by the 

 simple process of examining the birds. These, you may 

 protest, are not mistakes but pure fancies ; yet it is only 

 a short step from them to the romance, hardly yet under 

 popular doubt, that the albatross broods its eggs in a raft- 

 like, floating nest and sleeps on the wing, as you may 

 read in Lalla Rookh: 



While on a peak that braved the sky 

 A ruined temple tower'd so high 

 That oft the sleeping albatross 

 Struck the wild ruins with her wing, 

 And from her cloud-rocked slumbering 

 Started, to find man's dwelling there 

 In her own fields of silent air. 



Even more poetic is the tale of the death-chant of the 

 swan, still more than half-believed by most folks, for 

 we constantly use it as a figure of speech, describing in a 

 word, for example, the final protest of a discarded office- 

 seeker as his "swan-song." It is useless to hunt for the 



