THE PEACOCK.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 69, 3 January 1936, Page 8

THE PEACOCK.

REGAL BIRD OF HISTORY. The peacock’s mission in life, for most of us, is purely decorative, says a writer in the “Christian Science Monitor.” He belongs in a formal, walled garden, preferably one which has lor background an ancestral stone mansion. To anyone who has visited that part of England, Warwick Castle is the perfect setting. Here, on the velvety greensward or up and down tlie garden alleys, tlie peacocks pace, arching their sapphire necks and spreading the jewelled brilliance of their fanlike tails. Byron paid tribute to their beauty in a single line: “That royal bird, whose tail’s a diadem.” There is a> singular arrangement of the many-eyed feather in that tail. Each tiny plume that forms this “eye” is set at a different angle from its fellow. Thus each one catches the sun’s rays and is enabled to shine its best; as one writer describes it, “something after the fashion of the revolving lantern of a lighthouse, where one after another every facet reflects in turn the shining light.” Little wonder that the peacock, as Pliny said, “taketh no small pleasure in tlie eyes ol his feathers.” Those feathers give much pleasure to us who behold them. The native lands of the gorgeous creature are India, Burma, Siam, Java, and Ceylon, where he has lived lor thousands of years. Ho never migrated much of his own accord but has been taken to many parts of the world as a bird of ornament and thrives in various climates. The Phoenicians took peacocks from India to the Pharaohs of Egypt. Aristotle says Alexander the Great introduced them into Greece. Should I. be‘asked whether peacocks arc mentioned in the Bible my reply would probably he No. But, having so answered, doubts would immediately assail me on account of a vaguely familiar phrase, “ivory, and apes, and peacocks.” Now, is that from the Bible or from Shakespeare Turn to I. Kings and you will find this verse: “For the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram; once in three years come tlie navy of Tharshish bringing gold, and silver, ivory and apes, and peacocks.” This and a similar verse in 11. Chronicles IX., are perhaps the first mention of peacocks outside India. England, France and Germany knew the peocock as early as the fourteenth century. English barons of that period served roasted peacocks at banquets as evidence of their wealth. All this goes to show that there has always been something rather regal about tho peacock. His brilliant beauty and proud, stately demeanour make this only natural. In Egypt it was the Pharaohs who possessed peacocks; in Greece, Alexander thought the birds so beautiful that he ordered none should lie killed. The kings of Burma aho claimed to trace their descent from the sun, chose the peacock ns the royal emblem. The Chinese have long used the eyed feathers for an order granted as a reward of merit to mandarins. In the East—in India and his other native haunts —tlie peacock has never been used for food, for there lie is held sacred. Aside from his association with royalty, there is something of myth and mystery surrounding him. There are strange legends about him that have come down tlie centuries some of. them haunting and tiagic. Why should this he so it is not known. Perhaps mystery is felt to he in keeping with a creature of sucli resplendent beauty and of a species so ancient. This extraordinary quality about the peacock caused him also to he adopted by tlie early Christians as the symbol oi immortality. In the Catacombs at Rome there is a faded fresco of two peacocks combined with the name of a humble martyr to the cause of Christianity. In this symbolic; moaning they served as the man’s only and sufficient epitaph.