Elephant bird determined that "Vorombe titan" reached weights of and stood tall, making it the world's largest bird, slightly larger than the much older "Dromornis stirtoni". Elephant birds have been extinct since at least the 17th century. Étienne de Flacourt, a French governor of Madagascar in the 1640s and 1650s, mentions an ostrich-like bird said to inhabit unpopulated regions, though it is unclear whether he was repeating folk tales passed on from generations earlier. In 1659, Flacourt wrote of the "vouropatra – a large bird which haunts the Ampatres and lays eggs like the ostriches; so that the people of these places
The Lays of Beleriand The Lays of Beleriand The Lays of Beleriand, published in 1985, is the third volume of Christopher Tolkien's 12-volume book series, "The History of Middle-earth", in which he analyzes the unpublished manuscripts of his father J. R. R. Tolkien. The book contains the long heroic lays or lyric poetry Tolkien wrote: these are "The Lay of the Children of Húrin" about the saga of Túrin Turambar, and "The Lay of Leithian" (also called "Release from Bondage") about Beren and Lúthien. Although Tolkien abandoned them before their respective ends, they are both long enough to occupy many stanzas, each of which