Pherae

“ Some of the most wonderful creatures of Fairyland are to be found in Eastern stories, the tales of India, and Arabia, and Persia. Here we have the Divs, and Jinns, and Peris, and Rakshas—who were the originals of our own Ogres—and terrible giants, and strange mis-shapen dwarfs, and vampires and monsters of various kinds. Many others, also very wonderful, are to be found in what is called the Mythology—that is, the fables and stories—of ancient Greece, such as the giant Atlas, who bore the world upon his shoulders ”

“ I am a little shocked at my own choice of name in this case, not quite pleasing my imagination with the idea of a Coot-footed Fairy. But since Athena herself thinks it no disgrace to take for disguise the likeness either of a sea-gull or a swallow, a sea-fairy may certainly be thought of as condescending to appear with a diving bird's foot; and the rather that, if one may judge by painters' efforts to give us sight of Fairyland, the general character of its inhabitants is more that of earthly or marine goblins than aerial ones. ”

“ On its stilt-like legs one day it went stalking.”
Heron
“Yes,” said Uncle Paul, “that is the bird. Everything about the heron is long—legs, beak, neck. The length of its legs enables the bird to explore the swamp at its ease all day long without wetting a feather; its length of neck is needed that it may reach the ground without stooping; and the long beak is indispensable for burrowing in the tall tufts of grass where the reptile lurks, and for probing the mud where the worm buries itself.”
“I begin to see now,” said Jules, “how the character of a bird may be judged from its shape. ”

“ The Pharaoh, who from the threshold of his palace beheld this rising tide of frogs with weariness and disgust, crushed as many as he could with the end of his sceptre and pushed back the others with his curved sandals, but his labour was lost; more frogs came no one knew whence, and took the places of the dead, swarming more than they did, croaking more than they did, more loathsome, more uncomfortable, bolder, showing the vertebræ on their backs, staring at him with their big, round eyes, spreading out their webbed feet, wrinkling the white skin of their throats. ”

“ But what shall we say of a sparrow which, turning parasite, should go with splendid audacity and intrust her eggs to the eyrie of a bird of prey—the nest of the sparrowhawk itself—the sanguinary devourer of sparrows? What should we say of the bird of prey who should accept the charge and bring up the brood tenderly? It is precisely thus that the Bembex acts,—she, a captor of Diptera who yet brings up other Diptera—a huntress who distributes food to a prey whose last repast will be her own disembowelled offspring! ”

“ Pharae 7.22.1 Pharae, a city of the Achaeans, belongs to Patrae, having been given to it by Augustus. The road from the city of Patrae to Pharae is a hundred and fifty stades, while Pharae is about seventy stades inland from the coast. Near to Pharae runs the river Pieros, which in my opinion is the same as the one flowing past the ruins of Olenus, called by the men of the coast the Peiros. Near the river is a grove of plane-trees, most of which are hollow through age, and so huge that they actually feast in the holes, and those who have a mind to do so sleep there as well. ”

“ The prey is seized by two strong claws warmly gloved in down as far as the roots of the nails. Each foot has four toes, three pointing habitually forward, and one backward; but, by a privilege peculiar to nocturnal birds of prey, one of the front toes is movable and can be turned back so that the set of talons is divided into two pairs of equal power whenever the bird wishes to grip, as in a vise, the branch on which it perches, or the victim struggling in its grasp. One blow of the beak breaks the head of the captured creature. ”

“ Sitting in those barges were naked families of earth-tillers and artisans, well-dressed merchants, Phœnicians in bright garments, adroit Greek sailors, and even Assyrians and Hittites.
The people of this throng did not shout, they howled; they were not delighted, they were frantic. Every moment some deputation broke its way to the pharaoh’s barge to kiss the deck which his feet had touched, and to lay gifts before him: a handful of wheat, a bit of cloth, a simple earthen pitcher, a pair of birds, but, above all, a bunch of flowers. ”

“ He had detected the insect issuing from the ground, had dug at the spot where it made its appearance, and had found, at no great depth, the queer thing which he was bringing me.
Queer it was, and calculated to upset the little that I thought I knew. In shape it was exactly like a tiny pear that had lost all its fresh colour [268] and turned brown in rotting. What could this curious object be, this pretty plaything that seemed to have come from a turner’s workshop? Was it made by human hands? Was it a model of the fruit of the pear-tree intended for some children’s museum? One would say so. ”

“ The old parrot and another parrot then spread their wings, on which the Rajah seated himself as on a chair, and rising up in the air, they flew away with him out of sight.
Far, far, far, they flew, as fast as parrots can fly, over hills, over forests, over rivers, over valleys, on, on, on, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, only staying to rest every night when it got too dark to see where they were going. At last they reached the seven seas which surrounded the Panch-Phul Ranee's country. ”

“ Four-legged animals of two kinds, frogs and lizards, are readily separated from mammals; apodal reptiles or snakes are easily distinguished from both, and there is no difficulty in separating the moth or butterfly from the spider or dragon-fly. The great group to which the animal depicted belongs is not difficult to discover, and from a large series of related designs one may trace quite readily the changes in form which have resulted in highly conventionalized modifications. ”

“ It may be remarked that the flies surround Pharaoh alone, filling the air above him and crawling upon the ground beneath his feet, whilst Moses and Aaron, although close to him, and absent from their favoured Goshen, still enjoy immunity from the plague tormenting the guilty king, not one fly approaching them. ”

“ Powder-down feathers are degenerate down-feathers which appear to secrete a dry, waxy kind of powder. This powder rapidly disintegrates and becomes distributed over the plumage, adding thereto a quite peculiar bloom. In birds of the heron tribe powder-down feathers have reached a high degree of development, forming large patches in the breast and thighs, while in some hawks, and in the parrots, these mysterious feathers are scattered singly over the greater part of the body.
The nature of the covering of nestling birds is of a more complex character than has hitherto been suspected. ”

“ While, as we have seen, the fairies are endowed with many supernatural qualities, they have much in common with ordinary mortals; there are fairy [Pg 56] men, fairy women, and fairy children. I have more than once heard of a fairy's funeral; they intermarry with mortals, and I have been told that those who bear the name of Ferris are descended from fairies. I presume Ferris is a corruption of Fir Sidhe. Fairies are never associated with churchyards, nor are they usually looked on as the spirits of the departed. The banshee may, indeed, partake to some extent of a ghostly character. ”

“ The Pharaoh is sick with the plenty of the land, weary of the sight of grain-laden mules and ploughing cattle, and so cumbered about with mountains of wheat that he desireth not to plant his fields. Thou art not one to see his lands lie idle. If thou hast aught with which to tempt him, I can persuade him to let unto thee all his land and to hire unto thee all his men and mules and cattle. For hath he not acquired all his riches in seven years' harvests? ”

“ We all know that the Flea is so flat, or compressed sideways, that it does not mind the most severe squeeze. This condition is almost peculiar to it; a great flattening of the body is common in Insects—as is seen in another annoying Insect, the bed-bug—but the compression, in the flea, is in the reverse direction. In other respects the external anatomy of the flea shows several peculiarities, the morphological import of which has not yet been elucidated. ”

“ The matter is soon settled; the lady who stands in the photograph has on a little hat with a feather in it. On which side is the feather?"
Monk glanced at the photograph. "On the right side!"
"Yes, quite so; now do you think that any lady wears feathers on the right side of her hat?"
"No,—now I come to think of it, ladies usually wear feathers on the left side of their hats," Monk said, looking uncertainly at us both.
"Usually, do you say? Not at all! No lady ever wears feathers on the right side." ”

“ They are strong, recurved, chitinous, structures which prop up the body of the larva when it creeps and wriggles. There are similar props in the larvæ of certain beetles and no exactly similar organs are known in dipterous larvæ. But caudal stylets are of small taxonomic importance.
In one respect the mature flea is certainly nearer to a beetle than to a fly: the three joints of the thorax are free as in a beetle and not fused as in a fly; but when one studies the mouth-parts, the true view seems to be that the mouth-parts of a flea are equally unlike those of a fly and those of a beetle. ”

“ The feather mantles are made on a frame similar to that on which the peruke makers work hair; they spread the feathers in the same manner and fasten them on old fish nets or old mantles of mulberry bark. They are placed, spread in this manner, one over the other and on both sides; for this purpose small turkey feathers are used; women who have feathers of swans or India ducks, which are white, make these feather mantles for women of high rank. ”

“ All herons become more active toward evening because their prey does. By day, this heron, like his big, blue cousin, might be mistaken for a stump or snag among the sedges and bushes by the waterside, so dark and still is he. ”

“ There are few beings of the feathered race more peculiarly distinguished for the splendid gaiety and rich variety of colours with which their plumage is adorned than the parrot race; for however they may differ in size from the magnitude of a kite or hawk, to that of the comparative diminutive thrush or sparrow, they are almost uniformly beautiful in this particular, and exhibit a diversity that is scarcely found in any other tribe. The species we have selected for our present representation is one of the smaller kinds of the family distinguished by the name of Parrakeets. ”

“ And sometimes you may see it standing quite motionless in the shallower parts of a stream, watching for the fishes on which it feeds. After a time it will slowly stoop, plunge its long beak into the water, and draw it out again with a minnow, or a perch, or a frog struggling in its grip. Then it holds its beak almost upright, gives a gobble and a gulp—and the fish or the frog disappears!
The heron feeds largely on frogs, mice, insects, and worms, as well as upon fishes. And more than once it has been known to capture and swallow a small snake. ”

“ The abundance of birds belonging to the Heron tribe is well shown by some of the paintings and carvings on Egyptian monuments, in which various species of Herons and other water-birds are depicted as living among the papyrus reeds, exactly the locality in which they are most plentiful at the present day.
Unlike the bittern, the Heron is a most sociable bird, and loves not only to live, but even to feed, in company with others of its own species. ”

“ In England the heronries are invariably found in clumps of trees, the nests of the birds being quite close together. In some parts of Palestine, however, where trees are very scarce, the Heron is obliged to choose some other locality for its nest, and in that case prefers the great thickets of papyrus reeds which are found in the marshes, and which are even more inaccessible than the tops of trees. ”

“ The White Heron lives upon what he can pick up on the borders of marshes or the banks of rivers. He has a pretty large bill of fare, including fish, frogs, rats, mice, and various kinds of snails, worms, and insects. With his long legs he wades for some distance into the water, and there he stands without a movement, waiting for the fish to come within reach of his terrible beak. ”

“ From an examination of the various figures of birds on the Sikyatki pottery, and an analysis of the appendages to the wings, body, and legs, it is possible to determine the symbolic markings characteristic of two different kinds of feathers, the large wing or tail feathers and the so-called breath or body feathers. There is therefore no hesitation, when we find an object of pottery ornamented with these symbols, in interpreting them as feathers. Such a bowl is that shown in plate cxli, c, in which we find a curved line to which are appended three breast feathers. ”

“ Let us next consider the Agenia, who rivals the Pelopæus as a huntress and a worker in clay. She encloses the one Spider who forms her larva’s ration in an [223] earthenware shell hardly as large as a cherry-stone and embellished on the outside with a tiny milled pattern. This little gem of ceramics is an ellipsoid truncated at one end. When the structure stands alone, its accuracy of form is perfect.
But the potter’s ware does not end with this. The place of refuge discovered in some crevice in a sunny wall is a valuable site, where the whole family will take up its abode. ”