Note 42 — THE CATHOLIC WORLD. VOL. XXVII., No. 158.—MAY, 1878.

St. Francis draws many beautiful illustrations from this mythical bird. The ancients asserted that when age had exhausted the strength of the phœnix it built a funeral-pile of aromatic gums and wood on the top of some high mountain, and, ascending it when the sun was in his meridian splendor, lit the pile by the fanning of its wings, and was consumed to ashes. From these ashes sprang another phœnix.