KIRMAN. 
281 
as scarcely to be perceptible. When the young are nearly full feathered 
they are extremely voracious ; the old birds not being capable of sup- 
plying them with food sufficient to satisfy the calls of hunger, they 
are continually chirping, and may be discovered by their noise. 
The suspension of this bird by a thread, under the notion that its 
breast will always turn to the north, is as fabulous as that it will pre- 
serve woollen cloth from the moth. 
I have once or twice,” says Mrs. Charlotte Smith, “ seen a stuffed 
bird of this species hung up to the beam of a cottage ceiling, and 
imagined that the beauty of the feathers had recommended it to this 
sad pre-eminence, till, on inquiry, I was assured that it served the pur- 
pose of a weather-vane ; and though sheltered from the immediate 
influence of the wind, never failed to show every change, by turning its 
beak to the quarter whence the wind blew.”* The learned, but some- 
what credulous author of the ‘‘ Physicse Curiosse,” says the same, upon 
the testimony of his own observation. Father Athanasius Kircher,” 
he says, “ had one of these birds sent him in a present by a friend, and 
being disembowelled and dried, it was suspended from the ceiling of his 
celebrated museum, from 1640 to 1655, when 1 left Rome ; and though 
all the doors and windows were shut, it constantly turned its bill to- 
wards the wind, and this 1 myself observed with admiration and pleasure 
almost every day for the space of three years” ! ! I ^ 
It would be useless to follow the author in the romancing philo- 
sophy by which he pretends after Kircher, the possessor of the bird, to 
account for the phenomenon ; for notwithstanding his personal testi- 
mony, the whole story is evidently quite fabulous. This, however, is 
nothing to the supposed power of the bird to avert thunder, to augment 
hidden treasure, and bestow grace and beauty on the person who carries 
it, at the same time not forgetful of itself, though dead, but renewing 
its plumage each season of moulting.3 * 
The marvellous accounts of Aristotle, Virgil, Ovid, and others, may 
be perused in Mr. Pennant’s history of this bird, who has extracted 
the essence of those authors. The sailors of the present day do not 
find it has the power to calm the storm or hush the wind : they are 
very generally diffused throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, ; the only 
species out of nearly fifty that is found in the colder parts. 
KIRKTULLOCK. — A name for the Shoveller. 
KIRM AN. — A name for the Tern. 
* Nat. Hist, of Birds, i. p. 73. ^ Phys. Cur. ii. p. 1367. 
^ Aldrov. Orn. iii. p. 621, and Architecture of Birds, p. 57. 
