Shakespeare frequently refers to the mythical bird in his writings, and seems to have thoroughly mastered all that could be said on the subject. Some half-dozen passages naturally rise to one’s mind as illustrations of this: thus Rosalind says in As You Like It:— “She calls me proud; and that she could not love me, Were man as rare as Phœnix.” And the idea of its unique character is again brought out in Cymbeline, in the passage “If she be furnished with a mind so rare, she is alone the Arabian bird.” The destruction of the bird on its own funeral pyre, and the resurrection of its successor therefrom, are several times referred to. Thus in 1 Henry VI. we read: “But from their ashes shall be reared a Phœnix that shall make all France afeared,” and in 3 Henry VI.: “My ashes, as the Phœnix, may bring forth a bird that will revenge upon you all.” Some little doubt of its existence at all is suggested by the words of Sebastian in the Tempest. Now I will believe “That there are unicorns: that in Arabia There is one tree, the Phœnix throne; one Phœnix At this time reigning there.” Notwithstanding the doubts as to the reality of this creature that were freely expressed in the seventeenth century, two feathers that were said to be from the tail of a Phœnix were amongst the treasures of Tradescant’s Museum.[73] It was held a firm article of belief during the Middle Ages that the Bird of Paradise fed upon nothing more gross than the dew of Heaven and the odours of flowers, and that it had no feet, nor ever rested on earth at all. “Thou art still that Bird of Paradise Which hath no feet, and ever nobly flies.” It is a sadly prosaic explanation of this to recall that its footless condition simply arose from the fact that the natives of Molucca in sending the skins to Europe removed the legs and feet as needless additions, seeing that the beauty of the plumage was the reason for their export. Tavernier relates that “the Birds of Paradise come in flocks during the nutmeg season to the South of India. The strength of the nutmeg odour intoxicates them, and while they lie in this state on the earth, the ants eat off their legs.” Saving the last terrible detail and shocking instance of what may befall those who stray from the paths of temperance, Moore evidently adopts this account in Lalla Rookh in the lines:— “Those golden birds that in the spicetime drop About the gardens, drunk with that sweet fruit Whose scent hath lured them o’er the summer flood.” Literary allusions to the Bird of Paradise are not unfrequent, and testify to the general acceptance of the myth that has grown up around the prosaic facts of the case. Francis Thynne, in his “Emblemes and Epigrames,” A.D. 1600, takes the somewhat exceptional view that the bird is to be pitied:—