[3051] 28th March.
[3052] One would hardly think that there was anything wonderful in a crow being very black.
[3053] The “one-horned.”
[3054] Most probably in Asia Minor, and not Eriza in India.
[3055] Cuvier is inclined to think that the Anas tadorna approaches most nearly the description given here. From Ovid’s description of their hard and pointed bills and claws, it would appear that a petrel (Procellaria), or else a white heron (Ardea garzetta), is intended; but these birds, he remarks, do not make holes in the earth. Linnæus has given the name of Diomedea exulans to the albatross, a bird of the Antarctic seas, which cannot have been known to the ancients.
[3056] B. iii. c. 29.
[3057] See Ovid’s Met. B. xiii.
[3058] Albertus Magnus says that swallows can be tamed.
[3059] The Fulica porphyrio of Linnæus, the Poule sultane of Buffon.
[3060] Literally, “the blood-red foot.” Cuvier says that this description may apply to the sea-pie or oyster-eater, the Hæmatopus ostralegus of Linnæus, or else the long-legged plover, the Charadrius himantopus of Linnæus, but most probably the latter, more especially if the reading here is “himantopus,” as some editions have it.