. He had with him the quill of a chick Rukh,
and this held nine skins of water. He related the story of how he came by
this,--a story nearly the same as one of Sindbad's about the Rukh's egg.
(_Bochart_, II. 854.)

Another story of a seaman wrecked on the coast of Africa is among those
collected by M. Marcel Devic. By a hut that stood in the middle of a field
of rice and _durra_ there was a trough. "A man came up leading a pair of
oxen, laden with 12 skins of water, and emptied these into the trough. I
drew near to drink, and found the trough to be polished like a steel
blade, quite different from either glass or pottery. 'It is the hollow of
a quill,' said the man. I would not believe a word of the sort, until,
after rubbing it inside and outside, I found it to be transparent, and to
retain the traces of the barbs." (_Comptes Rendus_, etc., ut supra; and
_Livre des Merveilles de L'Inde_, p. 99.)

Fr. Jordanus also says: "In this _India Tertia_ (Eastern Africa) are
certain birds which are called _Roc_, so big that they easily carry an
elephant up into the air. I have seen a certain person who said that he
had seen one of those birds, one wing only of which stretched to a length
of 80 palms" (p. 42).

The Japanese Encyclopaedia states that in the country of the _Tsengsz'_
(Zinjis) in the South-West Ocean, there is a bird called _pheng_, which in
its flight eclipses the sun. It can swallow a camel; and its quills are
used for water-casks. This was probably got from the Arabs. (_J. As._,
ser. 2, tom. xii. 235-236.)

I should note that the _Geog. Text_ in the first passage where the
feathers are spoken of says: "_e ce qe je en vi voz dirai en autre leu,
por ce qe il convient ensi faire a nostre livre_,"--"that which _I have
seen_ of them I will tell you elsewhere, as it suits the arrangement of
our book." No such other detail is found in that text, but we have in
Ramusio this passage about the quill brought to the Great Kaan, and I
suspect that the phrase, "as I have heard," is an interpolation, and that
Polo is here telling _ce qe il en vit_. What are we to make of the story?
I have sometimes thought that possibly some vegetable production, such as
a great frond of the _Ravenala_, may have been cooked to pass as a Rukh's
quill. [See _App._ L.]

NOTE 7.--The giraffes are an error. The _Eng. Cyc._ says that wild asses
and zebras (?) do exist in Madagascar, but I cannot trace authority for
this.

The great boar's teeth