THE PIKENIX 



In former times, when hardly anybody thought of 

 travelling for pleasure, and there were no Zoological 

 Gardens to teach us what foreign animals and birds were 

 really like, men used to tell each other stories about all 

 sorts of strange creatures that lived in distant lands. 

 Sometimes these tales were brought by the travellers 

 themselves, who loved to excite the wonder of their friends 

 at home, and knew there was nobody to contradict them. 

 Sometimes they may have been invented by people to 

 amuse their children ; but, anyway, the old books are full 

 of descriptions of birds and beasts very interesting to read 

 about. 



One of the most famous of these was the Phoenix, 

 a bird whose plumage was, according to one writer, 

 ' partly red and partly golden,' while its size was ' almost 

 exactly that of the eagle.' Once in five hundred years 

 it ' comes out of Arabia,' says one old writer, ' all the way 

 to Egypt, bringing the parent bird, plastered over with 

 myrrh, to the Temple of the Sun (in the city of Heliopolis), 

 and then buries the body. In order to bring the body, they 

 say, it first forms a ball of myrrh as big as it can carry, 

 puts the parent inside, and covers the opening with fresh 

 myrrh ; the ball is then exactly the same weight as at 

 first ; thus it brings the body to Egypt, plastered over as 

 I have said, and deposits it in the Temple of the Sun.' 

 This is all that the writer we have been quoting seems 

 to know about the Phoenix ; but we are told by someone 



K B 



