Unbent by winds, unchilled by snows.

CHAPTER III
AN ORNITHOLOGICAL COMEDY OF ERRORS

Among the many proverbial expressions relating to birds, none, perhaps, is more often on the tongue than that which implies that the ostrich has the habit of sticking its head in the sand and regarding itself as thus made invisible. The oldest written authority known to me for this notion is the Historical Library of Diodorus Siculus. Describing Arabia and its products Diodorus writes:

It produces likewise Beasts of a double nature and mixt Shape; amongst whom are those that are called Struthocameli, who have the Shape both of a Camel and an Ostrich ... so that this creature seems both terrestrial and volatile, a Land-Beast and a Bird: But being not able to fly by reason of the Bulk of her body, she runs upon the Ground as Swift as if she flew in the air; and when she is pursued by Horsemen with her Feet she hurls the Stones that are under her, and many times kills the Pursuers with the Blows and Strokes they receive. When she is near being taken, she thrusts her Head under a Shrub or some such like Cover; not (as some suppose) through Folly or Blockishness, as if she would not see or be seen by them, but because her head is the tenderest Part of her Body.[[109]]

It would appear from this that Diodorus was anticipating me by quoting an ancient legend only to show how erroneous it was; but the notion has survived his explanation, and supplies a figure of speech most useful to polemic editors and orators, nor does anyone seem to care whether or not it expresses a truth. The only foundation I can find or imagine for the origin of this so persistent and popular error in ornithology is that when the bird is brooding or resting it usually stretches its head and neck along the ground, and is likely to keep this prostrate position in cautious stillness as long as it thinks it has not been observed by whatever it fears. The futile trick of hiding its head alone has been attributed to various other birds equally innocent.

Ostriches in ancient times roamed the deserts of the East from the Atlas to the Indus, and they came to hold a very sinister position in the estimation of the early inhabitants of Mesopotamia, as we learn from the seals and tablets of Babylonia. There the eagle had become the type of the principle of Good in the universe, as is elsewhere described; and a composite monster, to which the general term “dragon” is applied, represented the principle of Evil. The earliest rude conception of this monster gave it a beast’s body (sometimes a crocodile’s but usually a lion’s), always with a bird’s wings, tail, etc. “From conceiving of the dragon as a monster having a bird’s head as well as wings and tail, and feathers over the body, the transition,” as Dr. Ward[[23]] remarks, “was not difficult to regard it entirely as a bird. But for this the favorite form was that of an ostrich ... the largest bird known, a mysterious inhabitant of the deserts, swift to escape and dangerous to attack. No other bird was so aptly the emblem of power for mischief.... Accordingly, in the period of about the eighth to the seventh centuries, B. C., the contest of Marduk, representing Good in the form of a human hero or sometimes as an eagle, with an ostrich, or often a pair of them, representing the evil demon Tiamat, was a favorite subject with Babylonian artists in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates.”

In view of their inheritance of these ideas it is no wonder that Oriental writers far more recent told strange tales about this bird, especially as to its domestic habits, as is reflected in the book of Job, where a versified rendering of one passage (xxxix, 15, 16) runs thus:

Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks?

Or wings and feathers unto the ostrich?

Which leaveth her eggs in the earth,