THE DEMOISELLE, OR NUMIDIAN CRANE. 



A^THRopniDEs Virgo. Vieill. 



The name of Anthropo'ides, conferred upon this genus 

 bv its founder M. Vieillot, owes its origin to a mistaken 

 reading of a passage in Athenaeus, which the French 

 academicians of the seventeenth century improperly ap- 

 phed to the bird before us. They regarded the resem- 

 blance to man implied by this epithet as a convincing 

 proof that the Otus of the Greeks was a synonym of 

 the bird which they were themselves describing under 

 the name of Demoiselle, from a fancied coincidence 

 between its graceful but somewhat affected attitudes 

 and the manners of a young and polished female. It 

 is difficult, however, to conceive how these learned 

 men, with M. Pej'rault at their head, could have stum- 

 bled on so gross a misapprehension ; for the passages 

 cited by them from Greek and Roman authors prove 



