the Cotton library," which "has a silver hoop
about the end, whereon is engraven Griphi
Unguis, Divo Cuthberto Dunelmensi Sacer."
The same note says, "Another, about an ell
long, is mentioned by Dr. Grew, in his History
of the Rarities of the Royal Society, page
twenty-six; though the doctor there supposes
it rather the horn of a rock-buck, or of the
Ibex mas." What Sir John Mandevile himself
relates of the grifhn may be appropriately
mentioned here: "In that contree" (which
he calls Bacharie) "ben many griffounes,
more plentee than in any other contree. Sum
men seyn, that thai hav the body upward
as an egle, and benethe as a lyoun: and
treuly thei seyii sothe" (Sir John pretends,
then, to have seen one) "that thei ben of that
schapp. But a griffoun hathe the body more
gret and is more strong than eight lyouns, of,
suche lyouns as ben o this half; and more
gret and strongere than an hundred egles,
such as we han amonges us. For o griffoune
there will bere, fleynge to his nest, a gret
hors" (Glanvil and Sir John are both rowing
in the same boat), "or two oxen yoked to-
gidere, as they gon at the ploughe. For he
hath his talouns so longe and so large and
grete, upon his feet, as thoughe thei weren
homes of grete oxen or of bugles" (buffaloes),
"or of kyzn" (cows); "so that men maken
cuppes of hem, to drinken of: and of hire
ribbes and of the pennes of hire winges, men
maken bowes full stronge, to schote with
arwes and quarelle." That there may be no
mistake about the rieving capacity of Sir
John's griffin, a vignette on the title-page
of the edition of his works already cited, and
copied from an old engraving, presents us
with the lively portraiture of a griffin in the
act of bearing a knight and horse through
the air to breakfast his little ones, greatly to
the dismay of an astonished palmer—the
worthy knight himself—who is supposed to
witness the transaction.

Oriental writers, who have a special gift of
exaggeration, do not confine the exertions of
the griffin to such trifling work as that of
only carrying off a man and horse at the same
coup, they place an elephant in each claw and
and a third in his beak, and, thus weighted,
the rukh, or roc (which we identify with the
griffin), skims over the mountain tops till it
reaches the lonely nest, in which it makes its
ponderous meal. Ibn-el-Wardee, one of these
magnifying naturalists, states the length of
the rukh's wings at merely "ten thousand
fathoms," but Marco Polo corrects this
account, and cuts them down to "sixteen paces
in extent, from point to point," adding, that
"the feathers are eight paces in length, and
thick in proportion." He, nevertheless,
believes that some messengers sent to
Madagascar by the Grand Khan of Tartary,
brought back with them "a feather of the
rukh, positively affirmed to have measured
ninety spans, and the quill part to have been
two palms in circumference." Every reader
of the Arabian Nights—and that means every
one who can read—remembers (in the
translation of Galland's version) the perilous
adventure of Sindbad and his merchant friends
when they broke the roc's egg, took out the
young bird, and roasted it. All, however,
are not equally familiar with the story told
by Ibn-el-Wardee, on the authority of a
certain El-Maghrabee, which is given by Mr.
Lane in the notes to the twentieth chapter
of his translation of the world-famed
Entertainments. The details given by El-Wardee
are curious enough to justify reproduction
here. "He (El-Maghrabee) said that he
made a voyage in the Sea of China, and the
wind drove them to a large, wide island,
where the people of the ship landed to
procure water and fire-wood, taking with them
axes, and ropes, and water-skins, and he was
with them. And they saw upon the island a
dome, white, of enormous size, shining,
glistening, more than a hundred cubit's high,
So they went towards it and approached it,
and lo! it was the egg of the rukh. They
began to strike it with the axes, and with
masses of rock, and with wood, until it broke,
and disclosed the young rukh, which was
like a firm mountain; and they caught hold
of a feather of its wing, and pulled it, whereupon
it became dissevered from the wing;
and the formation of the feathers was not
complete. After this they killed the bird,
and carried away as much as they could of
its flesh. They also cut off the lower portion
of the feather, from the extremity of the
quill-part, and departed. And some of those
who entered the island had cooked of the
flesh, and eaten. Among these were old men
with white beards; and when they arose in
the morning, they found that their beards
had become black; and not one of the people
who ate became grey after that: wherefore
they said, that the stick with which they
stirred what was in the pot with the young
rukh was of the tree of youth: but God is
all-knowing. And when the sun rose, and
the people were in the ship, and she was
proceeding with them, lo! the rukh (the old
bird) approached, coming down like a vast
cloud, having in its claw a fragment of a
mountain, like an enormous house, and bigger
than the ship. And when it came over the
ship, in the sky, it cast down the stone upon
her, and upon those who were in her. But
the ship was swift in her course; so she got
before the stone, which fell into the sea, and
its fall occasioned a most terrible commotion
there. God, says the narrator, decreed us
safety, and delivered us from destruction."
But whether the roc and the griffin be one
and the same, or two distinct (apocryphal)
creatures, matters little: they are confessedly
a very dangerous sort of wild-fowl. Gomara,
who, in comparison, writes soberly with
regard to griffins, speaks of the Mexican
variety in these words: "The gryffons, in
time past, did cause the vale of Ancatlan to