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BIRDS IN LEGEND 



must be perpendicular to the surface of the earth, and, 

 therefore, it becomes clear that the moon would be the 

 first resting-place the birds would be likely to strike, 

 whereupon he draws this conclusion: "Therefore the 

 stork, and the same may be said of other season-observing 

 birds, till some place more fit can be assigned to them, does 

 go unto, and remain in some one of the celestial bodies ; 

 and that must be the moon, which is most likely because 

 nearest, and bearing most relation to this our earth, as 

 appears in the Copernican scheme; yet is the distance 

 great enough to denominate the passage thither an itine- 

 ration or journey." 



The author next clinches the matter by taking the 

 time that the stork is absent from its nesting-place, and 

 showing how it is utilized. Two months are occupied in 

 the upward flight, three for rest and refreshment, and 

 two more for the return passage. Thus this ingenious 

 writer lays what he considers a solid scientific foundation 

 beneath an ancient and vague theory. 



The sudden vanishing of some migratory birds while 

 others resembling them remained in view gave to ancient 

 ignorance — not yet altogether dissipated, even in these 

 United States — the belief that a bird might change into 

 the form of another. The difference noticed in plumage 

 in some species in summer and winter was accounted for 

 in the same way, as many old Greek myths illustrate. 

 Thus Sophocles, trying in one of his dramas to explain 

 an inconsistency between two versions of the myth of 

 Tereus, declares that the hoopoe of the older story is the 

 hawk of the newer one — the birds were altered, not the 

 narrative. He was easily believed, for to the Greeks of 

 his day it appeared plain that birds might become trans- 

 formed into others birds. Aristotle took great pains to 



