2 DICTIONARY OF BIRDS 
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in almost all classes of the population of every civilized country. In the 
ages during which intelligence dawned on the world’s ignorance, or before 
experience had accumulated, and even now in those districts that have 
not yet emerged from the twilight of a knowledge still more imperfect 
than is our own at present, an additional and perhaps a stronger reason 
for paying attention to the ways of Birds existed, or exists, in their 
association with the cherished beliefs handed down from generation to 
generation among many races of men, and not infrequently interwoven 
in their mythology.? 
Moreover, though Birds make a not unimportant appearance in the 
earliest written records of the human race, the painter’s brush has 
preserved their counterfeit presentment for a still longer period. What is 
asserted—and that, so far as the writer is aware, without contradiction— 
by Egyptologists of the highest repute to be one of the oldest pictures in 
the world is a fragmentary fresco taken from a tomb at Maydoom, and 
happily deposited, though in a decaying condition, in the Museum at 
Boolak. This picture is said to date from the time of the third or fourth 
dynasty, some three thousand years before the Christian era. In it are 
depicted with a marvellous fidelity, and thorough appreciation of form and 
colouring (despite a certain conventional treatment), the figures of six 
Geese. Four of these figures can be unhesitatingly referred to two species 
(Anser erythropus and A. ruficollis) well known at the present day ; and if 
the two remaining figures, belonging to a third and larger species, were 
re-examined by an expert they would very possibly be capable of 
determination with no less certainty.2 In later ages the representations 
of Birds of one sort or another in Egyptian paintings and sculptures 
become countless, and the bassi-rilievt of Assyrian monuments, though 
mostly belonging of course to a subsequent period, are not without them ; 
but so rudely designed as to be generally unrecognizable.* No figures of 
Birds, however, seem yet to have been found on the incised stones, bones 
or ivories of the prehistoric races of Europe. 
It is of course necessary to name Aristotle (B.c. 385-322) as the first 
serious author on Ornithology with whose writings we are acquainted, but 
even he had, as he tells us, predecessors ; and, looking to that portion of 
his works on animals which has come down to us, one finds that, though 
more than 170 sorts of Birds are mentioned,’ yet what is said of them 
amounts on the whole to very little, and this consists more of desultory 
1 For instances of this among Greeks and Romans almost any work on “ Classical 
Antiquities” may be consulted, while as rezards the superstitions of barbarous nations 
the authorities are far too numerous to be here named. 
~ A Jac-simile of the picture is, or was a few years ago, exhibited at the Museum 
of Science and Art in London, and the portion containing the figures of the Geese has 
been figured by Mr. Loftie (Ride in Egypt, p. 209). I owe to that gentleman’s kindness 
the opportunity of examining a copy made on the spot by an accomplished artist, as 
well as information that it is No. 988 of Mariette’s Catalogue. 
* Cf. W. Houghton ‘On the Birds of the Assyrian Monuments and Records,’ 
Trans. Soc. Bibl. Archexol. viii. pp. 42-142, 13 pls. (1883). The author being buta 
poor ornithologist, his determination of the figures cannot be trusted. As to the 
linguistic value of his labours I am not competent to speak. 
: This is Sundevall’s estimate ; Drs. Aubert and Wimmer in their excellent edition 
of the ‘Ioropiat rept swv (Leipzig: 1868) limit the number to 126, 
