ORDER ACCIPITRES. 175 



serving for themselves, did nothing but copy and compile the 

 traditions of the natives. Marco Polo informs that the Roc, 

 a bird of Madagascar, carried up elephants into the air *. 

 Herodotus was acquainted with ants, which were smaller than 

 some dogs, but larger than some foxes. We must always be 

 on our guard, even in the present age, against the exaggerated 

 accounts of form and size. Were we to trust to the rash 

 assertions of the inhabitants, we might easily believe that in 

 Egypt and South x\merica there existed crocodiles from thirty 

 to forty feet in length. Nevertheless, those who have actually 

 measured these animals have not found any that exceeded 

 twenty-eight. From every authentic account of the dimen- 

 sions of the condor, it appears that this bird is not larger than 

 the vultur barbatus, or Laemmer-geyer, which inhabits the 

 central chain of the mountains of Europe, and with which 

 both BufFon and Molina have confounded it. It has been with 

 the condor asAvith thePatagonians and so many other objects of 

 descriptive natural history, — the more they have been examined, 

 the more have their enormous dimensions been found to dimi- 

 nish. The average length of the condors, from the point of the 

 beak to the end of the tail, is but three feet three inches. Their 

 usual envergure eight or nine feet. Some individuals, from a 

 superabundant supply of aliment or other causes, may have 

 attained an extent of wings of fourteen feet. The laemmer- 



* This eagle-roc, of which Marco Polo speaks, exists, according- to 

 him, in the islands to the south of Madagascar. A domestic of Cublai 

 Khan, who was taken prisoner by the inhabitants of these islands, related 

 that the roc had feathers more than twelve paces in length. " Avis vero 

 ipsa tantcB fortitudinis, tit sola, sine aliquo adminiculo, elcphantem 

 capiat, ef in sublime sustollat, atque rursus in terrain cadere sinat, 

 quo carnibus ejus vesci possit." Marco Polo adds, that he believed for 

 a long time that the roc was a griffin, which, as everybody knows, is a 

 sort of winged lion, with the head of an eagle. The word roc, under which 

 name the old naturalists have placed all vultures, comes from the Per- 

 sian rhoc, and signifies hero. These birds were obviously the creatures 

 of mythological fiction. 



