184 HABITS OF BIRDS. 
fable, to various of the ancient diviners. Apollo- 
dorus, in his Bibliotheca, relates of Melampus, that 
he acquired this gift by having had his ears licked 
by serpents; and that one of the ways by which 
he chiefly gained a knowledge of futurity, was by 
listening to what he heard uttered by the birds as 
they flew over his head. . Porphyry, in his book on 
abstinence from animal food, refers to Empedocles, 
Plato, and Aristotle, in support of the opinion 
that all the inferior animals are possessed both 
of reason and language; and, in addition to Melam- 
pus, he mentions Tiresias, Thales, and Apollonius 
of Tyane, as having been able to interpret what 
they said. This is affirmed to have been one of 
the gifts bestowed upon Tiresias, in compensation 
for his blindness, by Minerva. Some of the Jewish 
‘rabbis have attributed a similar power to King 
Solomon. Even as late as the seventeenth century 
we find the Irish monk, Bonaventure Baron, in his 
work in defence of Scotus, speaking of a brother 
Franciscan, who, he says, understood the language 
of beasts, and was enabled by that means to fore- 
tel coming events. The belief that birds are pos- 
sessed of a knowledge of futurity, is part of the 
same notion which has led men to seek indications 
of what is about to happen in their flight and other 
movements, and which has given rise both to the 
ancient vaticination by augury, and to various pop- 
ular superstitions which still survive. The power 
of communicating the gift of prophecy inherent in 
the serpent, was also a prominent article of the 
mystic creed of antiquity. The Trojan prophetess 
Cassandra is said to have acquired her art by hay- 
ing been left one night, when a child, together with 
her twin brother Helenus, in the temple of Apollo, 
when the two were found next morning with some 
serpents coiled round them and licking their ears., 
And Pliny, in his natural History, tells us that De- 
mocritus had mentioned the names of certain birds, 
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