APPENDIX. 731 



Negative evidence is perhaps stronger in this case than in most 

 of the others in which I have had to refer to it. For it is difficult 



Babylonish captivity the word tuMi-im, the Hebrew representative of the Malabar name 

 for the peacock, had become obsolete, and, like many other Hebrew words, was nearly 

 forgotten in the time of the LXX, who have given what the Targum, using a word, 

 tavass, almost identical with raws, holds to be its true meaning, only once and in a 

 various reading (Cod. Alex.), aa.1 Ta&vcav. And Minayeff (cit. Caldwell, Dravidian 

 Grammar, ed. 1875, p. 92) has discovered in the Buddhistical writings that the ancient 

 Indian merchants took peacocks to Babylon. Probably the fowl was carried with them. 



As regards the absence of any mention of the common fowl in the Homeric poems, 

 I have been told that an eminent and voluminous writer upon this subject is of opinion 

 that in the line, II. . (vi.) 513, 



Tevxecri Trap.<paivcav, &s r' r/Ae/CTcyp, ffteft-qteft, 



we have Paris, in his ill-supported character of warrior, compared to this bird. A 

 somewhat similar passage in the Proverbs of Solomon (xxx. 31) has been similarly 

 misconceived of; and it is true that we do find this comparison used by ^Eschylus 

 (Agamemnon, 1671) for a man with a character not wholly unlike that of Paris. This 

 however proves nothing. I have not enquired what the balance of commentatorial 

 authority may be upon this point; for I cannot understand how any unprejudiced 

 person who will compare the passage already referred to, II. vi. 504-514, with the ten 

 lines II. x- (xxii.) 22-32, describing the armed Achilles, can doubt that the two passages 

 are the work of one poet ; that he uses in them two metaphors in illustration of one 

 phenomenon ; and that in neither of these metaphors is the bird in question alluded to. 

 Theognis (fl. 540 B. c.) is the earliest Western writer, so far as I know, in whom 

 any indisputable allusion to this bird has been found ; and to him the cock-crowing 

 appears to have become already a familiar mark of the passing of time. We have also 

 Payne Knight's authority (Prolegomena, ed. 1820, Paris and Strasburg, p. 3) for 

 saying that in the same sixth century B. C. the coins of Himera and Samothrace bore 

 evidence of its establishment in Mediterranean countries. See for coins, Goltz and 

 Nonnius, Grsecia, Insulse et Asia Minor; Carystus, tab. xi. et xii.; Massieu, p. 500; 

 Easche, Lex Numn. ii. 2. p. 311. 



Whilst upon the subject of the importation of animals from the East Indies, I would 

 draw attention to the fact that the area of the world's surface which M. Mortillet (in 

 his most suggestive paper, ' Sur 1'Origine de Bronze,' in the Revue d'Anthropologie, 

 1875, iv. p. 653) has pointed out as the region in which the largest and most readily 

 available deposits of tin were and are to be found side by side w^ith copper, the region 

 namely which extends from ' La Birmanie Anglaise ' to the Sunda Straits, lies entirely 

 within the area of distribution of the Gallus bankiva (see Sclater, Proc. Zqol. Soc., 

 April 21, 1863, p. 122), the undoubted parent stock of the common fowl. This coin- 

 cidence appears to me to add something to the force of M. Mortillet's argument in 

 favour of the East Indian origin of bronze ; but it must be added, on the other side, 

 that if the domesticated bird followed bronze westwards, this order of events was 

 reversed in the easterly and south-easterly direction, the introduction of the bird 

 having preceded all importation of metal into Polynesia. 



So much has of late been written upon the Indian or African origin of our domestic 

 animals, mammalian and avian, that it may be well to add in this connection that too 

 much weight may in this question be given to the principle laid down by Link in his 

 usually excellent though now old treatise, Die Urwelt, 1821, i. p. 201, to the effect that 

 the domestication of birds indicates a higher condition of civilisation than the domes- 

 tication of mammals. The Indians described by Mr. Bates (1. c. supra) domesticate 

 not only the common fowl which will, but curassows which will not breed in captivity; 

 and the same authority is referred to by Mr. Francis Galton (Trans. Ethn. Soc., 1865, 

 New Series, vol. iii. p. 125) as having given him a list of birds tamed by the same 

 tribes which is more extensive than the list of quadrupeds tamed by them, though that 

 list contains twenty-one species. And this they do, at the same time that they ' do not 



