The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6)

Chapter 342: CHAP. 67.—FOREIGN BIRDS: THE PHALERIDES, THE PHEASANT, AND THE NUMIDICÆ.

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About This Book

The volume assembles an encyclopedic survey of the known world and its living inhabitants, moving from detailed regional geography and descriptions of seas, rivers, islands, and peoples to extended treatments of humanity, its generation, anatomy, and the origins and inventions of arts. Subsequent books catalog terrestrial animals—their habits, capture, and uses—followed by comprehensive observations on fish and marine creatures, their sizes and behaviors. Accounts mix naturalistic description, reported marvels, medicinal uses derived from animals, and travel and secondhand reports, organized as topical chapters intended as a practical compendium of natural and human phenomena.

CHAP. 67.—FOREIGN BIRDS: THE PHALERIDES, THE PHEASANT, AND THE NUMIDICÆ.

In the Hercynian Forest, in Germany, we hear of a singular 3063 kind of bird, the feathers of which shine at night like fire; the other birds there have nothing remarkable beyond the celebrity which generally attaches to objects situate at a distance.

(48.) The phalerides,3064 the most esteemed of all the aquatic birds, are found at Seleucia, the city of the Parthians of that name, and in Asia as well; and again, in Colchis, there is the pheasant,3065 a bird with two tufts of feathers like ears, which it drops and raises every now and then. The numidicæ 3066 come from Numidia, a part of Africa: all these varieties are now to be found in Italy.