TACITUS AND THE PH@NIX 
mouth, while in the cranes a soft interval is left in the 
middle line. Cranes, moreover, do not as a rule perch 
high up in trees or upon buildings ; while both herons 
and storks do.’ Our particular crane is a native of 
Africa only, in which continent it is represented to-day 
by two species, to which the scientific names of Balearica 
chrysopelargus and B. pavonina are applied. Balearica 
suggests another habitat ; but apparently the occurrence 
of either species of crane away from Africa is extremely 
rare. It has, however, been alleged to have been, 
in the eighteenth century, an inhabitant of the Bale- 
aric islands. This evidence however, when duly sifted, 
appears to amount to a statement by a Spanish gentle- 
man who died in 1784, that he had heard it said that a 
specimen was found in those islands in the year 1780. 
Its rarity in Europe and Northern Africa and its occa- 
sional wanderings into these countries, coupled with 
its beautiful crown of gold, may perhaps be at the 
bottom of the phoenix stories. Tacitus tells how in 
the consulship of Fabius and Vitellius, “ Post longum 
seculorum ambitum avis phoenix in A’gyptum venit.” 
Now so rare is the crowned crane in Egypt that the late 
Mr. Blyth could find no record of its occurrence in 
that country. Thus a rarely appearing bird, unfamiliar 
therefore, and with a flame-like and radiating crown of 
feathers, would strike an imaginative people as some- 
thing odd; and out of these actual facts one hardly 
knows what superstructure may have been built. 
There is a pretty tall one if the phoenix has anything 
to do with this bird. Barring the eagle’s beak, the crowned 
crane would serve as an excellent replica of the phoenix 
in the so-called Life Assurance Corporation’s advertise- 
ment. We are, however, concerned here with a living 
and very real, and not with a fabulous, bird. In the 
skull of the crowned crane is a curious feature which is 
not a little deceptive. Underneath the crest the fore- 
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