PHLORONE. (0„11,,O) A yellow oil obtained by the dry distil lation of camphorate of lime. It emits an odour like peppermint. PHOCENIO ACID. [VaLzetasto ACID.) PlIOCENIN. Synonymous with Vasents.
PlICENIX (*o?rif), one of the most renowned of the fabulous monsters of antiquity, defined by the Arabians to be a " oreature whose name is known, its body unknown." (Itichardson'a ' Arabic and Persian Diet?) The earliest author who mentions it Is llesiod (sp Plut.,' De Defectu Orae.: cap. 11 ; and ap. l'iin., ' Diet. Nat.,' lib. vii. cap. 49), who merely says that It lives nine times as long as a crow The first detailed description and history that we meet with is in lierodotus, whose words on that account deserve to be quoted at length. "There is abso," says lie, In his account of Egypt (lib. ii., cap. 78), "another sacred bird, the name of which is the Oltenia ; I have not myself seen it except in a picture, for it seldom visits them, only (as the people of Ileliopolie say) every five hundred years. And they say that he only cornea when his sire dies. And he is, if he le like his picture, of size and shape as follows : part of his plumage is gold coloured, and part crimson; and be is for the most part very like to the eagle in outline and bulk. And this bird, they say, devises as follows, but they say what is to me beyond belief : that setting out from Arabia, he brings his sire to the temple of the sun ; that ho covers him with myrrh, and buries him in the temple of the sun ; and that he covers him thus : first he forms an egg of myrrh as large as he is able to bear, and afterwards triel,whether he can carry it ; and when he has made the trial, upon this he hollows out the egg, and puts his sire into it, and covers with other myrrh that part of the egg where he had made the hole and put in his sire; and when his sire lies inside, the weight [of the egg] is the same [as it was before it was bellowed out], and having covered him up, he conveys him to Egypt into the temple of the sun. Such are the things which they say this bird performs." Such is the story as told in Hcrodotus, and it is sub stantially the same as what was afterwards, though with various embellishments, repeated and believed for more than a thousand years.
It would be tedious and useless to quote the words of each author who forms the link in the chain : it will be sefficient to mention that between the times of Herodotus and Tacitus, the fable of the ' Phconix is told more or less fully and circumstantially by numerous classical writers. Of these writers perhaps the only passage curious enough to be particularly noticed is that in Lampridius, who tells us that Helioga balus promised his guests a phoenix for supper ; he was, however, obliged to be content with a dish of the tongues of pleenicopters (or flamingoes).
But it is not only in heathen authors that this fable is to be found; it is mentioned and believed by the Jewish rabbinical writers, and by the early fathers of the Christian church. The very words of several of these writers may be seen in Bochart (loco cit.) ; but the only rabbinical addition to the story worth noticing is preserved by Rabbi Osaia in his' Beroscith /tablet,' cap. 19 (ap. Bochart taro cit.), who says that the reason why the phmnix lives so long, and is in a manner exempt from death, is because it was the only animal that did not eat of the forbidden fruit in Paradise. A somewhat similar bird seems to have been known to.the Arabians under the name of ..4nka. Mr. Lane, in the notes to his translation of the ' Tales of a Thousand and One Nights' (ch. 20, note 22), tells us, on the authority of liaswini, that the anka is the greatest of birds; that it carries off the elephant as a kite carries off the mouse; that, in consequence of its carrying off a bride, God, at the prayer of a prophet named Handhalah, banished it to an Island in the circumambient ocean, unvisited by men, under the equinoctial line ; that it lives one thousand and seven hundred years ; and that when the young anka has grown up, if it be a female, the old female bird burns herself ; and if a male, the old male bird does so.