Note 2887 — BOOK X. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS.

Cuvier remarks, that all these relations are neither more nor less than so many absurd fables or pure allegories, but that the description given is exactly that of a bird which does exist, the golden pheasant, namely. The description given is probably taken from the pretended phœnix that Pliny mentions as having been brought to Rome in the reign of Claudius. It is not improbable, he thinks, that this may have been a golden pheasant, brought from the interior of Asia, when the pursuits of commerce had as yet hardly extended so far, and to which those who showed it gave, most probably, the name of the phœnix. Ajasson is of opinion, that under the story of the phœnix an allegory was concealed, and thinks it may not improbably have been employed to pourtray the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Bailly, Hist. de l’Astronomie, thinks that it bore reference to the great canicular year of the Egyptians.