26 o Notes. 



Both these fables may, I think, have been built up on a 

 slender basis of fact the only fact which the Greeks seem to 

 have known about the bird. Aristotle (Hist. Anim. v. 8. 4) 

 tells us that the aXmcav was very seldom seen. " It is the rarest 

 of all birds, for it is only seen at the setting of the Pleiades 

 (about Nov. 9) and at the winter solstice ; and it appears at sea- 

 ports flying as much as round a ship, and then vanishing away.' 

 Whether the bird is still seen in Greece only in late autumn 

 and winter I cannot say; but Mr. Seebohm tells us (Brit. 

 Birds, ii. 345) that in Eastern Europe it is compelled by the 

 cold to migrate, some finding their way to Egypt, and therefore 

 necessarily crossing the ^Egean, or passing over Greece or the 

 western coast of Asia Minor. I think it is a fair guess that 

 those known to Aristotle were on their way from Thrace and 

 Scythia to a warmer climate ; and this hypothesis would explain 

 not only their short stay, but their connection with the sea and 

 harbours, and their mysterious character. Even supposing that 

 a few haunted the Greek rivers at other tinier of the year, they 

 would not be often seen there by a people not given either to 

 sporting or to exploring out-of-the-way places; the one fact 

 which would impress itself on the unscientific mind would be 

 the sudden apparition in winter, and especially in mid-winter, 

 of this little blue-green spirit about the harbours, and its as 

 rapid disappearance. 



If this be so, I think we have not far to seek for the origin 

 of the two fables. Nothing being known of its nesting, it was 

 assumed that it nested at or about the time when it appeared ; 

 and the not unfrequent calm and fine weather of mid-December 

 would confirm the fancy, and give it a new mythical colouring. 

 (The matter-of-fact philosopher does not of course allow that 

 these fine days always occurred in his own experience ; they 

 are not always met, he says (v. 8. 3), in this country at the time 

 of the solstice, " but they always occur in the Sicilian Sea.") 

 When this fable of the nesting-time had once established itself, 



