The Chinese, likewise, though they call God by the appellative, _Cham Ti_, and have their temples of a quadrangular form, yet they are gross idolaters; like the ancient Egyptians, instead of offering up religious oblations to the great Creator and Preserver of the universe, they pay them to the pictures of their deceased ancestors, and erect temples to them, in solitary places without their cities—likewise to the sun, moon, planets, spirits, and inventors of arts; especially to the great Confucius, notwithstanding he strictly prohibited the like idolatrous rites. And the religious modes of the ancient inhabitants {25} of Niphon, or the Japanese, are nearly the same; which are diametrically opposite to the religious tenets of the wild Americans. The diviners among the Philistines pretended to foretel things, by the flying, chirping, and feeding of wild fowls. The Greeks and Romans called fowls, Nuncii Deorum. And Calchas is said to have foretold to Agamemnon, by the number of sparrows which flew before him, how many years the Trojan war should last. The Assyrians worshipped pigeons, and bore the figure of them on their standards, as the sacred oracles shew us, where the anger of the pigeon, and the sword of the pigeon, points at the destroying sword of the Assyrians. But, though the American woods swarm with a surprizing variety of beautiful wild fowl, yet the natives do not make the least pretension to auguries. They know it is by a certain gift or instinct, inferior to human reason, that the birds have a sufficient knowledge of the seasons of the year. I once indeed observed them to be intimidated at the voice of a small uncommon bird, when it pitched, and chirped on a tree over their war camp. But that is the only trace of such superstition, as I can recollect among them. Instead of calling birds the messengers of the gods, they call the great eagle, _Ooōle_; which seems to be an imitation of _Eloha_.—This may be accounted for, from the eagle being one of the cherubic emblems, denoting the air, or spirit. They esteem pigeons only as they are salutary food, and they kill the turtledove, though they apply it as a proper name to their female children.