Page:Essays on Early Ornithology and Kindred Subjects.djvu/18

4 between that of the phœnix and that of the pelican fed upon the blood of its mother whose beak is tipped with red, or that of the barnacle goose, of which the name suggests the mollusc, the barnacle, and which was said to proceed from the mollusc or that of the bird of paradise, the feet of which were cut off by the Malay traders who sold the skins, and which were commonly reported never to have had feet, but to float perpetually in the air.

Thus two streams united into one floated the conception of the rukh—a mythological stream taking its rise from the simourgh of the Persians and a stream of fact taking its rise in the observation of a real bird which visited certain islands off the south-east coast of Africa, and which is said to have resembled an eagle and may have been a sea-eagle. With commendable reticence lexicographers tell us that 'rukh' was the name of a bird of mighty wing.