Chapter 5.III.

How there is but one pope-hawk in the Ringing Island.

We then asked Master Aedituus why there was but one pope-hawk among such
venerable birds multiplied in all their species. He answered that such was
the first institution and fatal destiny of the stars that the clerg-hawks
begot the priest-hawks and monk-hawks without carnal copulation, as some
bees are born of a young bull; the priest-hawks begat the bish-hawks, the
bish-hawks the stately cardin-hawks, and the stately cardin-hawks, if they
live long enough, at last come to be pope-hawk.

Of this last kind there never is more than one at a time, as in a beehive
there is but one king, and in the world is but one sun.

When the pope-hawk dies, another arises in his stead out of the whole brood
of cardin-hawks, that is, as you must understand it all along, without
carnal copulation. So that there is in that species an individual unity,
with a perpetuity of succession, neither more or less than in the Arabian
phoenix.

'Tis true that, about two thousand seven hundred and sixty moons ago, two
pope-hawks were seen upon the face of the earth; but then you never saw in
your lives such a woeful rout and hurly-burly as was all over this island.
For all these same birds did so peck, clapperclaw, and maul one another all
that time, that there was the devil and all to do, and the island was in a
fair way of being left without inhabitants. Some stood up for this
pope-hawk, some for t'other. Some, struck with a dumbness, were as mute as
so many fishes; the devil a note was to be got out of them; part of the