MARCO POLO, had he confined himself to a sober 

 narration of his travels, would have left to posterity 

 a valuable record of the political institutions and national 

 customs of the peoples of his day in the Far East. He was 

 not satisfied with doing this, but added to his narrative a number 

 of on-dit more or less marvellous in character, which he collected 

 from credulous or inventive persons with whom he came into 

 contact, principally from mariners and from other travellers. 



Of these addenda to his story not one is more incredible than 

 that of the rukh, and yet that addendum may be regarded as 

 indicating the transition from the utterly incredible to the 

 admixture of truth with fiction in bird-lore. For, whilst the 

 rukh possessed some characteristics which are utterly fabulous, 

 others are credible enough. We are told, for example, that it 

 resembled an eagle, that it was carnivorous, that it possessed 

 remarkable powers of flight, and that it visited islands which lay 

 to the south of Zanzibar, within the influence of an ocean current 

 which rendered difficult or impossible a voyage from these regions 

 to India, and which therefore must have tended in a southerly 

 direction. In this current we have no difficulty in recognising 

 that of Mozambique. On the other hand, that the rukh had 

 an expanse of wing of thirty paces, and that it could lift an 

 elephant in its talons, are of course utterly incredible assertions. 

 The rukh therefore holds a position in bird-lore intermediate 



