838 
PEBBLES AND STONES. 
him from " giving tongue " on the way. Through these devices the 
passage was accomplished securely : or if a catastrophe took place 
through the indiscretion of a member of the society, at least it was easy 
to detect at once the guilty wi-etch ; and so punishment followed imme- 
diately on detection — the " terrible example " cured the gossips of their 
propensity to chatter. 
The Greeks, however, did not err in affirming that many timorous 
birds change their hours of departure when they have to traverse a 
formidable pass. This is as true of the crane as of the goose, the 
duck, the thrush, and other feathered wanderers. 
Having noticed also that the cranes had the soldiers' custom of 
posting sentinels at night round the place where they determined to 
feed and sleep, the Greeks felt impelled to introduce another pebble 
into their veracious narrative. Though the new fable is but a variation 
of the former, it has had more success ; in fact, so much success, that 
the crane has become by virtue of it the official emblem of vigilance, 
and the craft of printers on the Continent have adopted it as their emblem. 
"I have told the history," says Toussenel; "now for the romance. 
It happened one night that, through want of vigilance on the part of a 
sentinel who had fallen asleep, a ferocious enemy, whom we wiU sup- 
pose to have been a fox, introduced himself into the camp, and gathered 
there a rich harvest. To prevent the recurrence of such a disaster, it 
was decided that for the future the sentinels should be obliged to stand 
on a single foot, and hold a pebble in the otlier, so that the fall of the 
stone might waken them if they should be on the point of yielding to 
drowsy influences. And thenceforth the hieroglyphic sign of watchful- 
ness was a crane on guard, holding a pebble in his claws. An Elzevir 
d la grue is worth, now-a-days, an almost fabulous sum." 
It is not from yesterday, we can assure the reader, that the good 
relations date between the cranes and letters. An opinion as old as 
the classic world or as the game of chess will have it that these birds 
suggested to Palamedes the invention of the letters Y and V (n Greek), 
both representing the acute angle which the cranes describe in their 
flight. Thence comes the name of "the bii'd of Palamedes," some- 
times given to the crane. 
