a grain of barley, and a cock, over which previous
incantations had been uttered, was let
loose among them; those letters off which it
pecked the barley, being joined together, were
then believed to declare the word of which
they were in search.  The magician Jamblichus,
desirous to find out who should succeed Valens
in the imperial purple, made use of this divination,
but the cock only picked up four grains,
namely, those which lay upon the (Greek) letters
th. e. o. d., so that it was uncertain whether
Theodosius, Theodotus, Theodoras, or
Theodectes, was the person designed by the Fates.
Valens, however, when informed of the matter,
was so enraged that he put several persons to
death, simply because their names began with
these letters.  When, however, he proceeded to
make search after the magicians themselves,
Jamblichus thought it high time to put an end
to his majesty's life by a draught of poison, and
he was succeeded by Theodosius in the empire
of the East.

Some pretenders went so far as to take
credit for comprehending the language of birds,
and thus to rely on something more than the
omens derived from their appearance and mere
voices.  Apollonius of Tyana, in Cappadocia,
was one of these, a Pythagorean who carried
out his master's precepts with great strictness,
and was raised by his disciples to the position of a
demi-god.  He boasted to the companion of his
travels, Damis, that he was skilled in all languages,
though he had never learned them, and understood
the languages of beasts and birds.  It is
reported of him by his biographer, Philostratus,
that as he was sitting in a parlour with his
friends, there came a sparrow and chatted to a
flock of birds that were before the window.
Apollonius, who heard the noise, said that the
sparrow was inviting them to a feast at a certain
place where a mule, laden with corn, had let his
burden fall.  The company, desirous to know
if this were true or not, immediately went
to the spot, and found it was as he had
told them.  Another pretender to this art was
Democritus, the laughing philosopher, who
combined considerable ability with not a little
knavery.  He had the impudence to assert that
he not only possessed the secret of bird language,
but could also impart it to others, which he
professed to do by telling them the names of
certain birds a mixture of whose blood would
produce a serpent, which, if eaten, would give
them this wonderful knowledge without any
further trouble; for which story the credulous old
Pliny is answerable.  Melampus of Pylos also
laid claim to a similar gift, which he received
miraculously in the following manner.  His
servant, having killed two large serpents, which
had made their nests at the bottom of an oak,
he raised a pile and burned them upon it, taking
care at the same time of their young, which he
fed with milk.  The grateful reptiles, instead of
acting like the adder in the fable, finding him
asleep some time after, crept up to him as he
slept upon the grass near the oak, and gliding
around him, softly licked his ears.  This awoke
Melampus, and to his astonishment he found
himself in the secret of the chirping of birds as
they flew around him, and taking advantage
of his wonderful endowment, he made himself
perfect in the knowledge of futurity.  After
his death, temples were raised to his memory.
The story of the Grand Vizier in the Spectator
will occur to every one; and a more modern
and trustworthy example may be met with
in the Quarterly Review for 1817, where the
writer states that he knew an individual who
had passed much of his time in boyhood alone,
in lonely situations, and had acquired by close
attention such a knowledge of bird-language, that
from the song of the parents he knew where the
nests were situated—whether they contained
eggs —whether the brood was hatched —and the
number of eggs or young birds, before he saw
them.

There was also a third mode of divination,
derived from the feeding of chickens, whose
eagerness or indifference in eating the food
thrown to them was looked upon as lucky or
unlucky.  Contempt of their intimations was
supposed to occasion signal misfortunes; as in
the case of P. Claudius in the first Punic war,
who, when the person who had charge of the
chickens told him that they would not eat,
which was esteemed a bad omen, ordered them
to be thrown into the sea, saying irreverently,
"Then, let them drink."  But it could not be
expected that such heathenism should pass
unpunished, and P. Claudius, soon after engaging the
enemy, was defeated with the loss of his fleet.

In the very nature of things, however, the
high claims of the augurs and aruspices could
not be maintained for ever.  In the palmy days
of augury, an augur once elected was an augur
for life.  Of whatever crime he was guilty he
could not be deprived of his office, because, says
Plutarch, he was entrusted with the secrets of
the empire.  The art seems first to have been
contrived, and afterwards cultivated, to increase
the influence of the leading men over the multitude.
But some, like Cato, were so profane as
to say they were surprised that the aruspices
did not laugh when they saw one another, their
art was so ridiculous; while, on the other hand,
the ancient writings teem with wonderful instances
of the truth of their predictions.  Such
instances may be met with in Livy, Sallust,
Tacitus, Suetonius, Diodorus, and Caesar.  In
the fifty-fourth year of his age Cicero was appointed
an augur, but by his time the office had
lost its religious character altogether, though it
was still regarded as one of the highest political
dignities, and was greatly coveted for the power
it conferred.

In our own day we have not wholly escaped
out of the power of the birds, and although they
exercise their dominion now only over the
uneducated and the superstitious, still there are
persons who are as submissive to them as the
Romans were.  They are chiefly, however, the
unlucky birds which exercise influence now-a-days.
Bishop Hall, describing the superstitious
man, says, " If a bittourn fly over his head