CHAPTER XII. 



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HE association of trees and birds has been the 

 theme of the most ancient writers. The Skalds 

 have sung how an Eagle sat in stately majesty 

 on the topmost branch of Yggdrasill, whilst the 

 keen-eyed Hawk hovered around. The Vedas 

 record how the Pippala of the Hindu Paradise 

 was daily visited by two beauteous birds, one of 

 which fed from its celestial food, whilst its com- 

 panion poured forth delicious melody from its reed-like throat. 

 On the summit of the mystic Soma-tree were perched two birds, 

 the one engaged in expressing the immortalising Soma-juice, the 

 other feeding on the Figs which hung from the branches of the 

 sacred tree. A bird, bearing in its beak a twig plucked from its 

 favourite tree, admonished the patriarch Noah that the waters of 

 the flood were subsiding from the deluged world. 



In olden times there appears to have been a notion that in 

 some cases plants could not be germinated excepting through the 

 direct intervention of birds. Thus Bacon tells us of a tradition, 

 current in his day, that a bird, called a Missel-bird, fed upon a 

 seed which, being unable to digest, she evacuated whole; and that 

 this seed, falling upon boughs of trees, put forth the Mistletoe. A 

 similar story is told by Tavernier of the Nutmeg. "It is observ- 

 able," he says, "that the Nutmeg-tree is never planted: this has 

 been attested to me by several persons who have resided many 

 years in the islands of Bonda. I have been assured that when the 

 nuts are ripe, there come certain birds from the islands that lie 

 towards the South, who swallow them down whole, and evacuate 

 them whole likewise, without ever having digested them. These 

 nuts bemg then covered with a viscous and glutinous matter, 



