ROBUSTI, Jacopo. See TINTO RETTO.
ROC, r6k, a mythical bird of enormous size, supposed to have been able to perform won derful feats of strength and ferocity. The most popular accounts of the roc are given in 'The Arabian Nights' Entertainments,' where the bird plays an important part in the fortunes of Sinbad the Sailor. Sinbad describes the roc as white, with a claw as large as the trunk of a large tree and with a beak of prodigious size and sharpness. Its egg he declares to be 50 paces in circumference, about 150 feet. Another writer computes that the egg of the roc is equal to 150 hens' eggs. The bird is described as a bird of 'prey, *able to bear an elephant away in its talons,* and *killing the moa, which it bore to its nest and destroyed to provide food for its young.* Consult (The Arabian Nights' Enter tailunents> for the accounts of the second voy age, and the third Calendar's Story. Attempts
have been made to identify the roc with the so called elephant-birds of Madagascar and New Zealand, but it is asserted by naturalists that neither this huge bird (which is not a bird of prey) nor the Harpagornis, the largest known rapacious bird, could have performed the feats commonly attributed to the roc. There were described to the Parisian Academy of Sciences the fossils of an enormous bird called the iEpyornis and two of its eggs, fossil remains of which had been discovered. (See reports for first quarter, 1851). This little-known colossal form has been accepted as the nearest ap proach to the fabulous roc. Consult Lane, E. W., 'Arabian Nights' Tales and Anecdotes' (London 1845), and Yule, Sir Henry, in (Book of Marco Polo> (ib. 1871).