(Bochart, Hierozoica, II. 852 seqq.; Mas’udi, IV. 16; Mem. dell’ Acad. dell’ Instit. di Bologna, III. 174 seqq., V. 112 seqq.; Zurla on Fra Mauro, p. 62; Lane’s Arabian Nights, Notes on Sindbad; Benj. of Tudela, p. 117; De Varia Fortuna Ernesti Bavariae Ducis, in Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum of Martene and Durand, vol.  III. col. 353 seqq.; I.B. IV. 305; Gildem. p. 220; Pigafetta, p. 174; Major’s Prince Henry, p. 311; Erman, II. 88; Garcin de Tassy, La Poesie philos. etc., chez les Persans, 30 seqq.)

[In a letter to Sir Henry Yule, dated 24th March 1887, Sir (then Dr.) John Kirk writes:  “I was speaking with the present Sultan of Zanzibar, Seyyed Barghash, about the great bird which the natives say exists, and in doing so I laughed at the idea.  His Highness turned serious and said that indeed he believed it to be quite true that a great bird visited the Udoe country, and that it caused a great shadow to fall upon the country; he added that it let fall at times large rocks.  Of course he did not pretend to know these things from his own experience, for he has never been inland, but he considered he had ample grounds to believe these stones from what he had been told of those who travelled.  The Udoe country lies north of the River Wami opposite the island of Zanzibar and about two days going inland.  The people are jealous of strangers and practise cannibalism in war.  They are therefore little visited, and although near the coast we know little of them.  The only members of their tribe I have known have been converted to Islam, and not disposed to say much of their native customs, being ashamed of them, while secretly still believing in them.  The only thing I noticed was an idea that the tribe came originally from the West, from about Manyema; now the people of that part are cannibals, and cannibalism is almost unknown except among the Wadoe, nearer the east coast.  It is also singular that the other story of a gigantic bird comes from near Manyema and that the whalebone that was passed off at Zanzibar as the wing of a bird, came, they said, from Tanganyika.  As to rocks falling in East Africa, I think their idea might easily arise from the fall of meteoric stones.”]

[M.  Alfred Grandidier (Hist. de la Geog. de Madagascar, p. 31) thinks that the Rukh is but an image; it is a personification of water-spouts, cyclones, and typhoons.—­H.C.]

NOTE 6.—­Sir Thomas Brown says that if any man will say he desires before belief to behold such a creature as is the Rukh in Paulus Venetus, for his own part he will not be angry with his incredulity.  But M. Pauthier is of more liberal belief; for he considers that, after all, the dimensions which Marco assigns to the wings and quills of the Rukh are not so extravagant that we should refuse to admit their possibility.