P R E F A C E. 
2 ?9 
explication feems to me extremely forced, and 
every thing is much better accounted for by fup~ 
pofing, that at Dodona natural augury was fir# 
changed into religious augury ; for there the oaks 
allb prophefied ; which plainly fhews the fir# 
Hate of religious augury, when it had not wholly 
put off its antient form, but like the inonfters in 
Ovid’s Metamorphofes, ftill retained enough of it 
to convince us what it had once been. That 
Dodona was one of the firft places where augury 
was prabtifed, is highly probable , for it is 
mentioned by Homer as an oracle of eftablifhed 
reputation at the time of the Trojan war: now 
Pliny tells us, that Tircfias invented augury and 
arufpicy ; and that he was reputed an augur ap- 
pears by Sophocles in the CEdipus Tyrannus, 
where he is introduced faying thus, to Tirefias, 
c If you have received any information concern- 
c ing the death of Laius from the birds, or by 
c other means, do not envy it usd Tirefias there- 
fore, according to Sophocles, lived in. the time of 
Laius ; and Laius, according to Sir Ifaac New- 
ton, lived not 80 years before the taking of 
Troy. 
I will here fubjoin an account of what has 
been obferved about the difappearance of birds, 
which will ferve to confirm what i faid above con- 
cerning the effebb, which that phenomenon might 
not improbably have on the minds of men ; and 
give room for the fuperffitious impoftures that 
arofe from thence. Ariftotle has a chapter on 
that fubjebt ; wherein he fays, c that many birds, 
c and not a few, as fome imagine, hide themfelves 
‘ in holes f he then enumerates the / wallow , the 
kite, the thrujh, the ft ar ling, the: owl, the crane , 
2 the 
