aditions come down from their ancestors, said to have been a
black hawk of great size, as large as the Moa.

I have to thank Mr. Arthur Grote for a few words more on that most
interesting subject, the discovery of a real fossil _Ruc_ in New Zealand.
He informs me (under date 4th December 1874) that Professor Owen is now
working on the huge bones sent home by Dr. Haast, "and is convinced that
they belonged to a bird of prey, probably (as Dr. Haast suggested) a
Harrier, _double the weight of the Moa_, and quite capable therefore of
preying on the young of that species. Indeed, he is disposed to attribute
the extinction of the Harpagornis to that of the Moa, which was the only
victim in the country which could supply it with a sufficiency of food."

One is tempted to add that if the Moa or Dinornis of New Zealand had its
_Harpagornis_ scourge, the still greater Aepyornis of Madagascar may have
had a proportionate tyrant, whose bones (and quills ?) time may bring to
light. And the description given by Sir Douglas Forsyth on page 542, of
the action of the Golden Eagle of Kashgar in dealing with a wild boar,
illustrates how such a bird as our imagined _Harpagornis Aepyornithon_
might master the larger pachydermata, even the elephant himself, without
having to treat him precisely as the Persian drawing at p. 415 represents.

Sindbad's adventures with the Rukh are too well known for quotation. A
variety of stories of the same tenor hitherto unpublished, have been
collected by M. Marcel Devic from an Arabic work of the 10th century on
the "_Marvels of Hind_," by an author who professes only to repeat the
narratives of merchants and mariners whom he had questioned. A specimen of
these will be found under Note 6. The story takes a peculiar form in the
Travels of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela. He heard that when ships were in
danger of being lost in the stormy sea that led to China the sailors were
wont to sew themselves up in hides, and so when cast upon the surface they
were snatched up by great eagles called gryphons, which carried their
supposed prey ashore, etc. It is curious that this very story occurs in a
Latin poem stated to be _at least_ as old as the beginning of the 13th
century, which relates the romantic adventures of a certain Duke Ernest of
Bavaria; whilst the story embodies more than one other adventure belonging
to the History of Sindbad.[5] The Duke and his comrades, navigating in
some unknown ramification of the Euxi