x. chap. ii. (BOSTOCK and RILEY'S
trans., vol. ii., 1855, PP. 479-481).

The description of the plumage, _etc_., of this bird applies fairly
well, as CUVIER has pointed out,(2) to the golden pheasant, and a
specimen of the latter may have been the "fictitious phoenix"
referred to above. That this bird should have been credited with the
extraordinary and wholly fabulous properties related by PLINY and others
is not, however, easy to understand. The phoenix was frequently used
to illustrate the doctrine of the immortality of the soul (_e.g_. in
CLEMENT'S _First Epistle to the Corinthians_), and it is not impossible
that originally it was nothing more than a symbol of immortality which
in time became to be believed in as a really existing bird. The fact,
however, that there was supposed to be only one phoenix, and also that
the length of each of its lives coincided with what the ancients
termed a "great year," may indicate that the phoenix was a symbol
of cosmological periodicity. On the other hand, some ancient writers
(e_.g_. TACITUS, A.D. 55-120) explicitly refer to the phoenix as a
symbol of the sun, and in the minds of the ancients the sun was closely
connected with the idea of immortality. Certainly the accounts of
the gorgeous colours of the plumage of the phoenix might well be
descriptions of the rising sun. It appears, moreover, that the Egyptian
hieroglyphic _benu_, {glyph}, which is a figure of a heron or crane (and
thus akin to the phoenix), was employed to designate the rising sun.

(2) See CUVIER'S _The Animal Kingdom_, GRIFFITH'S trans., vol. viii.
(1829), p. 23.

There are some curious Jewish legends to account for the supposed
immortality of the phoenix. According to one, it was the sole animal
that refused to eat of the forbidden tree when tempted by EVE. According
to another, its immortality was conferred on it by NOAH because of its
considerate behaviour in the Ark, the phoenix not clamouring for food
like the other animals.(1)

(1) The existence of such fables as these shows how grossly the real
meanings of the Sacred Writings have been misunderstood.

There is a celebrated bird in Chinese tradition, the _Fung Hwang_, which
some sinologues identify with the phoenix of the West.(2) According to
a commentator on the '_Rh Ya_, this "felicitous and perfect bird has a
cock's head, a snake's neck, a swallow's beak, a tortoise's back, is of
five different colours and more than six feet high."