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 Tyanae, 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 hav- 

 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, 



