Xll PREFACE 



for example, that avOos is hostile to anavOk and to the Horse, 

 that TTITTW is hostile to iroutA.1?, to Kopi>5coi>, to \Xapevs and to 

 epooSto's, that one Hawk is hostile to the Raven and another 

 to the Dove, and one Eagle to the Goose or to the Swan, 

 we try at first to use these statements as best we can in 

 unravelling the probable identification of the respective 

 species. But when we find, for instance, among the rest 

 that the Owl is hostile to the Crow, and when we recognize 

 in that statement the ancient Eastern fable of the War of 

 the Owls and Crows, we are tempted to reject the whole 

 mass of such statements and to refuse them entry into the 

 domain of Zoological Science. While former commentators 

 have, with greater or less caution, rejected many fables, 

 they have often rashly accepted many others. And I fear 

 for my part that I in turn, while rejecting a much greater 

 number, have perhaps also erred in ascribing a fabulous or 

 mystical meaning to too few. 



For many such statements, and for others equally unin- 

 telligible in the terms of Natural History, I offer a novel 

 and, at first sight, a somewhat startling explanation : to wit, 

 that very many of them deserve not a zoological but an 

 astronomical interpretation. 



In the spring of 1894 I read to the Royal Society of 

 Edinburgh a paper (which I have not yet printed) on * Bird 

 and Beast in Ancient Symbolism'. In that essay I sought 

 to demonstrate the astronomic symbolism of certain ancient 

 monuments, especially of the great bas-relief of Cybele in 

 the Hermitage Museum 1 ; secondly, of the beast and bird- 

 emblems of classical coinage 2 ; and lastly, of certain fables 

 or myths of the philosophers and poets. 



1 This monument, a figure of which is accessible in Miss J. E. Harrison's 

 Mythology of Ancient Athens, represents, according to my view, the ancient 

 tropics of Leo and Aquarius, with Taurus and Leo in symbolic combat in the 

 frieze below. 



2 The identical theory, in so far as it applies to numismatic emblems, was pro- 

 mulgated a few months afterwards by M. Jean Svoronos in a learned and scholarly 

 paper, to be found in the Bulletin de Correspondence Hellenique for 1894; but 

 the theory was not so novel as M. Svoronos and I supposed it to be. In con- 

 nexion with coins or gems, it is explicitly and admirably stated by Gorius, De 



