Though a belief in the phœnix has long since died away it was for a thousand years or more as much an article of credence as a swan or an eagle. As far as we are aware, the first reference to it is found in the pages of Herodotus, and the story, as he tells it in the seventy-third chapter of the second book of his history, was the basis upon which for centuries a vast superstructure of fabledom was reared. Even Tacitus, one of the most cautious and reliable of authors, seems to have felt no difficulty in believing in the existence of the phœnix. Erroneous as his account is, we feel at once on reading it that we have the opinions of one honestly seeking the truth, a very different sort of man to such a credulous old fellow, for example, as Maundevile. Tacitus writes that “in the course of the year[70] the miraculous bird known to the world by the name of the phœnix, after disappearing for a series of ages, revisited Egypt. A phenomenon so very extraordinary could not fail to produce abundance of speculation. The facts, about which there seems to be a concurrence of opinions, with other circumstances in their nature doubtful, yet worthy of notice, will not be unwelcome to the reader. That the phœnix is sacred to the Sun, and differs from the rest of the feathered species in the form of its head and the tincture of its plumage, are points settled by the naturalist. Of its longevity the accounts are various. The common persuasion is that it lives five hundred years, though by some writers the date is extended to fourteen hundred and sixty-one. It is the custom of the phœnix when its course of years is finished, and the approach of death is felt, to build a nest in its native clime, Arabia, and there deposit the principles of life, from which a new progeny arises. The first care of the young bird, as soon as fledged and able to trust to its wings, is to perform the obsequies of its father. But this duty is not undertaken rashly. He collects a great quantity of myrrh, and to try his strength, makes frequent excursions with a load on his back. When he has made his experiment through a great tract of air, and gains sufficient confidence in his own vigour, he takes up the body of his father and flies with it to the Altar of the Sun, where he leaves it to be consumed in flames of fragrance. Such is the account of this wonderful bird. It has, no doubt, a mixture of fable; but that the phœnix from time to time appears in Egypt seems to be a fact satisfactorily ascertained.”