spicuous object offered by this bird, it may be answered that if the name toijei be the original, it may not refer to a tuft, or may express both the erectile feathers on the head of a bird and those about the rump or the tail ; and that those of the peacock have at all times been sought to form artificial crests for human orna- ments. One other point remains to be considered, namely, whether the fieet went to the East, or pro- ceedeil soutliward along the African shore? No doubt, had the Phaniician trade guided the Hebrews in the last-mentioned direction, gold and apes might have been obtained on the east coast of Africa, and even some kinds of spices in the ports of Abyssinia ; for all that region, as far as the Strait of Madagascar, was at that early period in a state of comparative affluence and civilization. But in that case a great part of the com- mercial produce would have been obtained within the borders of the Red Sea, and beyond the Strait ; the dis- tance to be traversed, therefore, being but partially af- fected by the monsoons, never could have required a period of three years for its accomplishment; and a pro- longed voyage round the Cape to the Guinea and Gold Coast is an assumption so wild that it does not merit; serious consideration ; but intending to proceed to India, the fleet had to reach the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb in time to take advantage of the western monsoon ; be in port, perhaps at or near Bombay, before the change; and after the storms accompanying the change it had to proceed during the eastern monsoon under the lee of the land to Coodramalli, or the port of Palesimundus in Taprobana, on the east coast of Ceylon ; thence to the Coromandel shore, perhaps to the site of the present ruins of Mahabalipuram ; while the return voyage would again occupy one year and a half. The ports of India and Ceylon could furnish gold, precious stones. Eastern spices, and even Chinese wares ; for the last fact is fully established by discoveries in very ancient Egyptian tombs. Silks, which are first mentioned in Prov. xxxi, 22, could not have come from Africa, and many articles of advanced and refined social life, not the produce of Egypt, could alone have been derived from India. See OPHin.
Though in this short abstract of the arguments re- specting the direction of Solomon's fleet there may be errors, none, we believe, are of sufficient weight to im- pugn the general conclusion which supports the usual rendering of tiikyim by " peacocks ;" although the in- crease of species in the West does not appear to have been remarkable till some ages after the reign of the great Hebrew monarch, when the bird was dedicated to Juno, and reared at first in her temple at Samos. There are only two species of true peacocks, viz, that under consideration, which is the Pavo cristaius of Linn.; and another, Pm-o Muficus, more recently discovered, which differs in some particulars, and originally belongs to Japan and China. Peacocks bear the cold of the Himalayas; they run with great swiftness, and where they are serpents do not abound, as they devour the 3-oung with great avidity, and, it is said, attack with spirit even the cohra de capello when grown to con- siderable size, arresting its progress and confusing it bj' the rapidity and variety of their evolutions around it, till, exhausted with fatigue, it is struck on the head and despatched (Kitto). The ascription of the quality of vanity to the peacock is as old as the time of Aristotle, who says (IJist. An. i, 1, § 15), " Some animals are jeal- ous and vain like the peacock."
The A, Y. in Job xxxix, 13, speaks of " the goodly wings of the peacocks;" but there the Hebrew words are different (tlDb"3 D^33"l "33, the wing of the renanim is lifted vp, or tiutters joyously), and have undoubted reference to the "ostrich" (q. v.). See also Aura.m-
MKLKCH.
PEACOCK in Christian symbolism was an emblem of the resurrection. It is well known that this bird loses its brilliant plumes every year at the approach of win-
PEACOCK
855
PEARCE
Peacock as a Christian Sym- bol.
ter (" anniiis vicibus," as I'liiiy expresses it, IJist. Nut. X, 22), and renews them in spring, wlien nat- ure seems to reissue from the tomb. Hence inter- preters of Christian archae- ology regard this bird as an unequivocal type of the resurrection (Bosio, Sotl. p. G41; compare Aringhi, liom. subterr. c. 30, p. 612) ; although Mamachi {Autiq. Chrisl. iii, 92) observes that this opinion rests sole- ly upon the authority of the fathers. Anthony of Padua has made the same representation {^Serm. J'er. 5 post Triiiit.). St. Augustine finds another token of the resurrection in the incorruptibility Avhich his age attrib- uted to the flesh of the peacock {De Civit. Dei, xxi, 4). These references are corroborated by the figures of this bird found in early Eoman cemeteries. We figure one of these from the cemetery of Sts. Marcellin and Peter (Bottari, vol. ii, pi. 97), of a peacock rising from a globe as an emblem of this world. For others, see Boldetti {Civi/. p. 1G3), Lupi {Dissert. II, i, 204), D'Agincourt {Peinture, pi. 2, No. 9), Polidori {Sojyra alciini sepolcri, etc., p. 57). — Martigny, Diet, des Antiq. Chret. s, v. Paon.