93 
**ot only have furnished to the Philosopher 
an interesting subject of enquiry, but also 
have been adopted by the vulgar as the 
groundwork of superstition, and have be- 
come a fruitful source of popular delusions. 
If in the most refined periods of antiquity, 
and amidst some of the highest advances 
of science, which the human intellect has 
ever been able to make, the flight of an 
eagle or the croaking of a raven was held 
sacred and portentious, it could hardly 
fail but that a creature marked by habits 
so strange, and rejecting some of even the 
strongest and most universal passions of 
animated beings, should be esteemed as 
acting under the guidance of divine in- 
spiration, and the direction of heaven. It 
is the character of all superstition to lay 
hold of whatever is uncommon, and to 
clothe it with attributes and powers which 
seem to be only limited by the extent of 
imagination and the range of fancy. 
In some countries they have been held 
propitious, and venerated as oracles, in 
others they have been considered as un- 
clean and unlucky. It has been believed 
