1 86 History of Nature. [BooK X. 



Advantages obtained from them are their Eggs, which are 

 so big, that some use them for Vessels ; and their Feathers 

 adorn the Crests and Helmets of Soldiers. 



CHAPTER II. 

 Of the Phoenix. 1 



THE Birds of Ethiopia and India are for the most part 

 of a variety of Colours, and such as can hardly be described : 

 but the Phoenix of Arabia is more noble than all others. I 



1 The Phoenix is one of the most renowned of the fabulous creatures 

 of antiquity. The first detailed description and history of this bird that 

 we meet with is in Herodotus (Lib. ii. cap. Ixxiii.), whose story is sub- 

 stantially the same as what was afterwards, though with various embel- 

 lishments, repeated and believed for more than a thousand years. 



The passage in which Tacitus notices the Phoenix is very remarkable, 

 and deserves to be quoted at length, as being the most authentic account 

 of it that has been preserved, and also as showing that so cautious and 

 accurate a man as he is always considered to be, entertained no kind of 

 doubt as to its real existence, and its periodical appearance in Egypt. 



" A.U c. 787, A.B. 34. Paulus Fabius and Lucius Vitellius succeeded 

 to the consulship. In the course of the year the miraculous bird, known 

 to the world by the name of the Phoenix, after disappearing for a series 

 of ages, revisited Egypt. A phenomenon so very extraordinary could 

 not fail to produce abundance of speculation. The learning of Egypt was 

 displayed, and Greece exhausted her ingenuity. The facts, about which 

 there seems to be a concurrence of opinions, with other circumstances, in 

 their nature doubtful yet worthy of notice, will not be unwelcome to the 

 reader. That the Phoenix is sacred to the sun, and differs from the rest 

 of the feathered species in the form of its head, and the tincture of its 

 plumage, are points settled by the naturalists. Of its longevity the 

 accounts are various. The common persuasion is, that it lives five 

 hundred years, though by some writers the date is extended to four- 

 teen hundred and sixty- one. The several eras when the Phoenix has 

 been seen are fixed by tradition. The first, we are told, was in the reign 

 of Sesostris ; the second in that of Amasis ; and in the period when 

 Ptolemy, the third of the Macedonian race, was seated on the throne of 

 Egypt, another Phoenix directed his flight towards Heliopolis, attended 

 by a group of various birds, all attracted by the novelty, and gazing with 

 wonder at so beautiful an appearance. For the truth of this account we 

 do not presume to answer. The facts lie too remote ; and, covered as 

 they are with the mists of antiquity, all further argument is suspended. 



