These birds were well known in ancient times; Homer, Herodotus, Aristotle, Plutarch, Ælian, Pliny, and Strabo have noticed them and their migrations. Unfortunately, not content with correct observations, they have given credence to some most ridiculous fables, invented in Greece and Egypt, the classic and fertile lands of the marvellous. Thus, according to the Egyptian story, the Cranes made an expedition to the sources of the Nile to fight against the Pygmies, who were, as Aristotle says, "a race of little men, mounted on little horses, who dwelt in caves." According to Pliny, these little men were armed with arrows, and mounted on rams; they abode in the mountains of India, and came down every spring to wage war against the Cranes, whose sole object was to exterminate the Pygmies. The Roman naturalist fancies that they succeeded in this destructive aim, for the town of Gerania, which even in his time was ruined and deserted, was formerly, he asserts, inhabited by a race of Pygmies, who were driven out by the Cranes. In the views of modern commentators, these Pygmies were nothing but monkeys, which assemble in large troops in the forests of Africa and India, and always manifest hostility to birds. The Greeks have also invented two stories about Cranes, which are certainly very ingenious, but result from the error of attributing too much importance to trifles. They say Cranes carry a pebble in their mouths when they cross Mount Taurus, so that they are compelled to keep mute; they thus avoid exciting the attention of the Eagles inhabiting those districts, which birds are much disposed to do them mischief. In the same way, the Crane which is placed as sentinel to watch over his sleeping companions is bound to stand on one leg, and carry a stone in the other claw, so that if he allows himself to be overtaken by slumber, the fall of the pebble would wake him up. It was, as we are aware, the expedient of the youthful Aristotle to hold an iron ball suspended over a metal basin in order to wake himself if he succumbed to sleep. We shall, I think, ascribe too much ingenuity to the Crane in imputing to it an action of Aristotle's. The members of this interesting feathered tribe were said to possess certain virtues. The thigh bone of a Crane imparted to him who possessed it remarkable vigour and elasticity of limb. Its brain also was a kind of love-philtre; it transformed the ugliest man into a perfect Adonis, and won for him the favour of the fair.