188. This classification is unscholarly, because there are many snatchers and scratchers who perch as well as the sitters; and many of the swimmers sit, when ashore, more neatly than the sitters themselves; and are most grave incessors, in long rows, on rock or sand: also, 'incessor' does not mean properly a sitter, but a besieger; and it is awkward to call a bird a 'Rasor.' Still, the use of the feet is on the whole characteristic, and convenient for first rough arrangement; only, in general reference, it will be better to use plain English words than those stiff Latin ones, or their ugly translations. Linnæus, for all his classes except the stilt-walkers, used the name of the particular birds which were the best types of their class; he called the snatchers "hawks" (Accipitres), the swimmers, geese, (Anseres), the scratchers, fowls, (Gallinae), and the perchers, sparrows, (Passcres). He has no class of climbers; but he has one since omitted by Cuvier, "pies," which, for certain mythological reasons presently to be noted, I will ask you to keep. This will give you seven orders, alto gether, to be remembered; and for each of these we will take the name of its most representative bird. The hawk has best right undoubtedly to stand for the snatchers; we will have his adversary, the heron, for the stilt-walkers; you will find this very advisable, no less than convenient; because some of the beaks of the stilt-walkers turn down, and some turn up; but the heron's is straight, and so he stands well as a pure middle type. Then, certainly, gulls will better represent the swimmers than geese; and phea sants are a prettier kind of scratchers than fowls. We will take parrots for the climbers, magpies for the pies, and sparrows for the perchers. Then take them in this order: Hawks, parrots, pies, sparrows, pheasants, gulls, herons; and you can then easily remember them. For you have the hawks at one end, the herons at the other, and sparrows in the middle, with pies on one side and pheasants opposite, for which arrangement you will find there is good reason; then the parrots necessarily go beside the hawks, and the gulls beside the herons. 189. The bird whose mythic history I am about to read to you belongs essentially and characteristically to that order of pies, picae, or painted birds, which the Greeks continually opposed in their thoughts and traditions to the singing birds, representing the one by the magpie, and the other by the nightingale. The myth of Autolycus and Philammon, and Pindar's exquisite story of the infidelity of Coronis, are the centres of almost countless tra ditions, all full of meaning, dependent on the various Toikinía, to eye and ear, of these opposed races of birds. The Greek idea of the Halcyon united both these sources of delight. I will read you what notices of it I find most interesting, not in order of date, but of brevity; the simplest first. 190 "And the King of Trachis, the child of the Morning Star, married Alcyone. And they perished, both of them, through their pride; for the king called his wife, Пlera; and she her husband, Zeus: but Zeus made birde of them (avтoùs àπwρvéwσe), and he made the one a Halcyon, and the other a Sea-mew."-Apollodorus, i. 7, 4. "When the King of Trachis, the son of Hesperus, or of Lucifer, and Philonis, perished in shipwreck, his wife Alcyone, the daughter of Æolus and Ægiale, for love of him, threw herself into the sea;—who both, by the mercy of the gods, were turned into the birds called Halcyons. These birds, in the winter-time, build their nests, and lay their eggs, and hatch their young on the sea; and the sea is quiet in those days, which the sailors call the Halcyonia."—Hyginus, Fab. LXV. 191. "Now the King of Trachis, the son of Lucifer, had to wife Halcyone. And he, wishing to consult the oracle of Apollo concerning the state of his kingdom, was forbidden to go, by Halcyone, nevertheless he went; and perished by shipwreck. And when his body was brought to his wife Halcyone, she threw herself into the sea. Afterwards, by the mercy of Thetis and Lucifer, they were both turned into the sea-birds called Halcyons. And you ought to know that Halcyone is the woman's name, and is always a feminine noun; but the bird's name is Halcyon, masculine and feminine, and so also its plural, Halcyones. Also those birds make their nests in the sea, in the middle of winter; in which days the calm is so deep that hardly anything in the sea can be moved. Thence, also, the days themselves are called Halcyonia." -Servius, in Virg. Georg. i. 399. 192. "And the pairing of birds, as I said, is for the most part in spring time, and early summer; except the halcyon's. For the halcyon has its young about the turn .of days in winter, wherefore, when those days are fine, they are called 'Halcyonine' (λvóveιoi); seven, indeed, before the turn, and seven after it, as Simonides poetized, (ἐποίησεν). 'As, when in the wintry month Zeus gives the wisdom of calm to fourteen days, Then the people of the land call it The hour of wind-hiding, the sacred "And in the first seven days the halcyon is said to lay her eggs, and in the latter seven to bring forth and nour ish her young. Here, indeed, in the seas of Greece, it does not always chance that the Halcyonid days are at the solstice; but in the Sicilian sea, almost always. But the æthuia and the laros bring forth their young, (two, or three) among the rocks by the sea-shore; but the laros in summer, the æthuia in first spring, just after the turn of days; and they sit on them as other birds do. And none. of these birds lie torpid in holes during the winter; but the halcyon is, of all, seen the seldomest, for it is seen scarcely at all, except just at the setting and turn of Pleias, und then it will but show itself once and away; flying, perhaps, once round a ship at anchor, and then it is gore instantly"-Aristotle, Hist. Av., v. 8, 9. 193. "Now we are ready enough to extol the bee for a wise creature, and to consent to the laws by which it care for the yellow honey, because we adore the pleasantness and tickling to our palates that is in the sweetness of that; but we take no notice of the wisdom and art of other creatures in bringing up their young, as for instance, the halcyon, who as soon as she has conceived, makes her nest by gathering the thorns of the sea-needle-fish; and, weav ing these in and out, and joining them together at the ends, she finishes her nest; round in the plan of it, and long, in the proportion of a fisherman's net; and then she puts it where it will be beaten by the waves, until the rough surface is all fastened together and made close. And it becomes so hard that a blow with iron or stone will not easily divide it; but, what is more wonderful still, is that the opening of the nest is made so exactly to "the size and measure of the halcyon that nothing larger can get into it, and nothing smaller!-so they say ;-"no, not even the sea itself, even the least drop of it.”—Plutarch: De Amore Prolis. I have kept to the last Lucian's dialogue, "the Halcyon," to show you how the tone of Christian thought, and tradition of Christ's walking on the sea, began to steal into heathen literature. SOCRATES-CHAEREPHON. 194. "Chaerephon. What cry is that, Socrates, which came to us from the beach; how sweet it was; what can it be the things that live in the sea are all mute |