Milvus Ater
Glede () is an obsolete name for the common kite. It is a species that rises to a towering height, hangs apparently motionless in the sky, and darts down with immense velocity; but the legs and claws being weak, it is cowardly, and feeds upon carrion, fish, insects, mice, and small birds. About Cairo kites are particularly abundant, mixing with the carrion vultures in their wheeling flight, and coming in numbers to the daily distribution of food awarded them. But the question whether the kite of Europe and that of Egypt are the same species, is not decided, though there is no want of scientific names for both species found in the valley of the Nile; one of which is certainly distinct from the European, and the other, if not so, is still a strongly marked variety. The bill of this species is dark; head and throat whitish, with brown streaks; body above dark gray brown, pale ferruginous below; tail but slightly forked; legs yellow. It is found in hieroglyphic paintings colored with sufficient accuracy not to be mistaken. The other species, which we figure above as Milvus ater, is the black kite. It has the head, neck, and back dark rusty gray; scapulars bordered with rusty; wing-coverts and primaries black, the last mentioned tipped with white; tail rusty gray above, white beneath; bill dark; legs yellow. The manners of both species are much the same: it is likely that they are equally abundant at Cairo, and spread into Palestine [HAWK].
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John Kitto was an English biblical scholar of Cornish descent.Born in Plymouth, John Kitto was a sickly child, son of a Cornish stonemason. The drunkenness of his father and the poverty of his family meant that much of his childhood was spent in the workhouse. He had no more than three years of erratic and interrupted education. At the age of twelve John Kitto fell on his head from a rooftop, and became totally and permanently deaf. As a young man he suffered further tragedies, disappointments and much loneliness. His height was 4 ft 8 in, and his accident left him with an impaired sense of balance. He found consolation in browsing at bookstalls and reading any books that came his way.
From these hardships he was rescued by friends who became aware of his mental abilities and encouraged him to write topical articles for local newspapers, arranging eventually for him to work as an assistant in a local library. Here he continued to educate himself.
One of his benefactors was the Exeter dentist Anthony Norris Groves, who in 1824 offered him employment as a dental assistant. Living with the Groves family, Kitto was profoundly influenced by the practical Christian faith of his employer. In 1829 he accompanied Groves on his pioneering mission to Baghdad and served as tutor to Groves's two sons. In 1833 Kitto returned to England via Constantinople, accompanied by another member of the Groves mission, Francis William Newman. Shortly afterwards he married, and in due course had several children.
A London publisher asked Kitto to write up his travel journals for a series of articles in the Penny Magazine, a publication read at that time by a million people in Britain, reprinted in America and translated into French, German and Dutch. Other writing projects followed as readers enquired about his experiences in the East amidst people living in circumstances closely resembling those of Bible times.
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