196 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



a vegetable product, others the hair of a rat-like animal: 

 the western Arabs, however, mostly believed it to be the 

 plumage of a bird, so that naturally they identified it with 

 the fire-loving phenix. Arabian authors of the ioth cen- 

 tury and onward describe this bird, under the Greek name 

 "salamandra," as dwelling in India, where it lays its eggs 

 and produces young in fire. Sashes, they say, are made 

 of its feathers, and when one of them becomes soiled it 

 is thrown on a fire, and comes out whole, but clean. 



This is an excellent example of the mingling of fact 

 and fancy by which a student of these old matters is con- 

 stantly perplexed. It is probable that small woven 

 articles had long been known to the Arabs and Moors 

 as Eastern curiosities, for the people of southern China 

 since very ancient times had been collecting and preparing 

 fibrous asbestos, and weaving it into fire-proof cloth. 

 Such fabrics had, no doubt, a rough, fuzzy surface, not 

 unlike fur or the down of birds, and might easily be sup- 

 posed to be the latter. Hence the assertion that asbestos 

 was the skin of a bird indestructible by fire, the identifica- 

 tion of the phenix with the salamandra (as a bird — it had 

 other legendary forms), and the trade-name "samand" 

 given to asbestos cloth when the Arabs themselves began 

 to manufacture and sell it. So our proverbial idea of the 

 salamander goes back to a remote antiquity; but how it 

 came to be represented among us as a newt instead of a 

 bird belongs to another book. 



Meanwhile on the northern shore of the Mediterranean, 

 where the legend of the phenix was popular, it had been 

 introduced into Christianity as a symbol, as we know 

 from memorial sculpture, and from the writings of St. 

 Clement, who was the second pope after Peter. Its special 

 meaning was immortality, which in that period meant the 



