530 
pliny's natubal histokt. 
i 
[Book X. 
size, and of an agreeable flavour. The Balearic islands also 
send us a porphyrio/ that is superior to the one previously 
mentioned. There the buteo, a kind of hawk, is held in high 
esteem for the table, as also the vipio,^ the name given to a 
small kind of crane. 
CHAP. 70. PABULOTJS BIRDS. 
I look upon the birds as fabulous which are called pegasi,*' 
and are said to have a horse's head ; as also the griffons, with 
long ears and a hooked beak. The former are said to be na- 
tives of Scythia,^ the latter of ^Ethiopia. The same is my 
opinion, also, as to the tragopan ;^ many writers, however, 
assert that it is larger than the eagle, has curved horns on the 
temples, and a plumage of iron colour, with the exception of 
the head, which is purple. N^or yet do the sirens^ obtain any 
greater credit with me, although Dinon, the father of Clearchus, 
a celebrated writer, asserts that they exist in India, and that 
they charm men by their song, and, having first lulled them to 
sleep, tear them to pieces. The person, however, who may 
think fit to believe in these tales, may probably not refuse to 
believe also that dragons licked the ears of Melampodes, and 
bestowed upon him the power of understanding the language 
of birds ; as also what Democritus says, when he gives the 
names of certain birds, by the mixture of whose blood a ser- 
pent is produced, the person who eats of which will be able 
to understand the language of birds ; as well as the statements 
which the same writer makes relative to one bird in particular, 
known as the galerita," ^ — indeed, the science of augury is 
already too much involved in embarrassing questions, without 
these fanciful reveries. 
There is a kind of bird spoken of by Homer as the ''scops 
but I cannot very easily comprehend the grotesque movements 
which many persons have attributed to it, when the fowler is 
1 Flamingo. 2 gee B. xi. c. 44. 
3 Scythia and Ethiopia ought to be transposed here, as the griffons 
were said to be monsters that guarded the gold in the mountains of Scythia, 
the Uralian chain, probably. 
* Literally, the " goat Pan." Cuvier thinks that the bird here alluded 
to actually existed, and identifies it with the napaul, or horned pheasant of 
Buffon, the penelope satyra of Gmell, a bird of the north of India, and 
which answers the description here given by Pliny. 
5 See Ovid, Met. B. v. 1. ,553. e a kind of crested lark. 
' The Strix scops, probably, of Linn. See the Odyssey, B. v. 1. 66. 
