PARADISE-BIRD. 479 



adorned with combs or wattles, and the head fur- 

 nished with a crest. This imaginary bird Dr. 

 Forster supposes to have been no other than a 

 symbohcal Egyptian illustration of the annual 

 revolution of the sun, and the conversion of the 

 Great Year, which, according to Manilius, corre- 

 sponds with the supposed life of the Pho&nix, and 

 from which period the same course of seasons and 

 position of the heavenly bodies is renewed; and 

 that this takes place about noon on the day that 

 the sun enters Taurus. Horapollo also delivers 

 the same notion respecting the Phoenix: they ( the 

 Egyptian Priests) meaning to signify the con'oer- 

 sion of the Great Year, paint the Phcenix. These 

 notions then, says Dr. Forster, are to be explained 

 from the Theology of Egypt. 



Now though it is most certain, as Dr. Forster 

 observes, that the Birds of Paradise were never 

 known to the ancients, and that whatever the 

 Egyptian priests delivered concerning their fabul- 

 ous Phoenix has little apparent agreement with 

 the Bird of Paradise, yet it is remarkable enough 

 that the names applied both by the Indian and 

 European nations to these birds appear to attri- 

 bute something of a supposed celestial origin to 

 them. In all probability however this notion has 

 arisen merely from their transcendent beauty, 

 and the singular disposition and delicacy of their 

 plumage. The Portuguese navigators to the In- 

 dian islands called them Passaros da Sol, or Birds 

 of the sun, in the same manner as the Egyptians 

 bad regarded the imaginary Phoenix as a symbol 



