figurere, the sportsman slips a noose over the head,
and secures his game." The inhabitants of the
mountainous regions of India catch the Peacock
with a bird-lime prepared from the juice of two
sorts of trees (Ficus religiosa and F. indica),
boiled with oils into a consistence which proves
sufficiently tenacious to entrap them.

Buffon says that the Peacock is not a bird
indigenous to China, but if that country be the
"Cathay" of Sir John Maundeville (which is
doubtful, Tartary being more likely the region
meant), it was imported long ago; the ladies
there, according to his account, delighting in
the Peacock's plumage to complete their
head-dresses. Nor was it in far Cathay alone, that
ingenuity devised the artificial Peacock. In the
Three hundred and fifty-seventh Night of the
famous Arabian Entertainments, mention is made
of a wondrous Peacock of gold, endowed with
magical powers. "And while the King was sitting
on the throne of his dominions, on a certain day,
during one of these festivals, there came in unto
him three sages: with one of them was a
Peacock of gold; and with the second, a trumpet
of brass; and with the third, a horse of ivory
and ebony: whereupon the King said to them,
' What are these things, and what is their use?'
The owner of the Peacock answered, 'The use
of this Peacock is, that whenever an hour of the
night or day passeth, it will flap its wings, and
utter a cry.'" "In the Breslau edition," adds
Lane, in a note to this passage, "the Peacock is
described as being in the middle of a basin of
silver, and surrounded by four-and-twenty young
ones of gold; and the owner of it explains that
at the expiration of each hour, the Peacock
would peck one of its young ones; then, at
the end of another hour, a second of them;
and so on ; and that at the termination of the
month, it would open its beak, and that the
new moon would be seen in it." The uses of the
trumpet are then explained to the Persian king,
who wishes trial of it, and being satisfied of its
value as well as that of the Peacock, he desires
the sages who own them to ask of him what they
will, and they request, each of them, one of the
king's daughters in marriage. "Whereupon the
king bestowed upon them two of his daughters;"
thinking himself, doubtless, very lucky in having
got his girls off his hands so easily.

The most gorgeous Peacocks ever fashioned
by the hand of man were those that gave their
name to the throne of the greatest of all the
Great Moguls. All Oriental travellers advert to
this wonder of Delhi. The throne had been seven
years in finishing, and the expense of the jewels,
according to Dow, in his work on Hindustan, only
amounted to twelve hundred and fifty thousand
pounds of our money. Dow underrates the
value of the jewels, of which the Koh-i-noor
was the most resplendent: they have been
estimated at six millions and a half sterling. "It
was afterwards distinguished by the name of
'Tuckt Taöus,' or 'The Peacock Throne,'
from having the figures two Peacocks standing
behind it, with their tails spread, which were
studded with jewels of various colours to represent
the life. Between the Peacocks stood a Parrot
of the ordinary size, cut out of one emerald."

The most celebrated of all the vows of
chivalry were those that were called "The Vow of
the Peacock,"* or of "The Pheasant." These
noble birds—for so they qualified them—perfectly
represented, by the splendour and variety of their
colours, the majesty of kings during the middle
ages, when, superbly arrayed, they held what
was called "Tinel," or full court, corresponding
with the "Drawing-room" of modern times.
The flesh of the Peacock (or of the Pheasant),
according to the old romances, was the peculiar
diet of valiant knights and heart-stricken lovers,
and its plumage was considered by the Provençal
ladies the richest ornament with which they
could deck the crowns they bestowed on the
Troubadours, as rewards for the poetical talent
displayed by them in singing the praises of love
and valour. According to Matthew Paris, the
figure of a Peacock was frequently set up for
knights to practise on in jousting, and in tournaments
the gorgeous bird was often a conspicuous
prize. But it was on the day when a solemn
vow was made that the Peacock (or Pheasant)
became the great object of admiration, and whether
it appeared at the banquet given on these
occasions roasted or in its natural state, it always
wore its full plumage, and was brought in with
great pomp by a bevy of ladies, in a large vessel
of gold or silver, "before all the assembled
chivalry. It was presented to each in turn, and
each made his vow to the bird, after which it
was set upon a table to be divided amongst all
present, and the skill of the carver consisted in
the apportionment of a slice to every one. There
is a very old romance, in the collection of
manuscripts in the Imperial library of Paris, bearing
the title of "The Vow of the Peacock, and the
Return of the Peacock," by which we learn that
the ladies made a point of choosing one of the
bravest of the assembly to go with them when
they carried the Peacock to the knight who was
esteemed the most renowned in arms; this
knight it was who placed the dish before him
whom he thought most worthy, and then cut up
the bird for distribution.

* No one whose recollections of the Royal Academy
Exhibition carry him back to the year 1835, can fail
to recal to memory Maclise's magnificent picture on
this subject, now, I believe, in the possession of the
Earl of Chesterfield.

But the most authentic form of this kind of
vow is given in the Chronicle of Olivier de la
Marche, in describing the events which
happened at the court of Philip the Good, Duke of
Burgundy, in the year fourteen hundred and
fifty-three. He at that time proposed to join a
crusade against Constantinople meditated by
the King of France, and the vow which was
taken in consequence ran partly as follows: "I
vow first to God, my Creator, and to the glorious
Virgin Mary, his mother, then to the ladies,
and to the Pheasant." (or, as it might have been,
"Peacock"), "that if it be the pleasure of the
most Christian and most virtuous Prince, the
King" (of France—it is the Duke himself who