A Literary Curiosity

THE author of The Poets’ Birds starts with a theory that the British poets are profoundly ignorant of natural history, and thoroughly unsympathetic in their treatment of “ things in fur and feathers.” His purpose in the present work — the first of a series, as it has been intimated—is to maintain this theory so far as it relates to birds ; and with at least one branch of his subject he claims to have a very exceptional acquaintance. He writes with the most unhesitating assurance about the “ whole range of British poetry,” “ all the range of English poetry,” the “ whole range of the poets,” “all the rest of the poets,” “no poet,” and so forth. In an article published since the book, The American Eagle in the Poets, he says, “ During the last year or two, I have rummaged through such a prodigious number of European poets as I fancy few have ever done.” He is a writer of experience, and has a certain attractiveness of style. All this tends to give plausibility to his utterances, and the question arises how far they are worthy of credit.

The book is in two parts, and consists of notes by the author on the poets’ treatment of birds and of quotations from the poets. The notes abound in novel assertions and criticisms ; and since by far the larger part of the volume is made up of the poetical extracts, selected, classified, and quoted by the author himself, it is reasonable to expect that these extracts will justify both his statements and his comments. This, however, they signally fail to do.

“ What a ‘ turtle’ is,” he says (page 23), “ the poets cannot agree. Some make it the male of ‘ the dove,’ others the female of the ‘ stock dove,’ and others, again, the male or female of the ring dove ; while the stock dove and ring dove are similarly mismated in bewildering combinations, the general result being as delightful a confusion of three wholly distinct species of birds as even poets could wish for.” He also tells us repeatedly and emphatically that the poets are ignorant of the migration of the turtle dove; also that this bird is “ habitually described as lamenting her dead stock dove or ring dove.” He has given about one hundred and seventy quotations from the poets about doves, and in the whole there is not a word to sustain any one of these charges. In one passage, however, our author apparently designs to accuse Watts of “ mismating ” doves: “What relation each species bears to the other the poets never considered themselves at liberty to determine. Watts makes ‘the turtle’ the opposite sex of ‘ the dove : ’ ‘ No more the turtle leaves the dove.’ ” Poets hope to have readers of ordinary intelligence. Instead of saying here, “ No more the turtle leaves its mate,” Watts, for the sake of his rhyme, uses the general term “ dove.” The only rational interpretation of the expression is perfectly obvious. “ Many [birds] of conspicuous charms,” says the writer, “ might be all as dowdy as nightingales or larks. I take these two birds ‘ advisedly,’for they are the supreme favorites of the poets, and for one avowed reason, — because they are feathered in simple brown.” Nothing in support of this declaration can be found in nearly three hundred passages quoted about these birds, although in two of those on the nightingale it is implied that it does not need gaudy or dazzling plumage to make it attractive.

But if it is too much to insist that our author’s own selections from the poets should warrant his accusations, let us go to the poets themselves and to naturalists. In the chapter on the lark, we find this note : “ It is a curious fact that several poets mention a ‘ mountain lark.’ Is it possible that their familiarity with Milton’s phrase ‘the mounting lark ’ led to the poetical creation of a new species ? ” The brilliancy of this remark, which refers to poets, not schoolchildren, cannot fail to be appreciated, especially in view of the fact that the phrase “ the mounting lark ” does not occur in the poems of Milton.

We read on page 232, “ How delightfully Virgil’s metaphor, ‘So the struck eagle stretched upon the plain,’ etc., might be misapplied to the goose! ” This figure (not a metaphor here, hut a simile) was taken by Æschylus from Libyan fables. Several poets since have made use of it, but it is not to be found in Virgil.

Poets are specified (page 157) who have improperly mated doves, thus : “ Thomson uses ‘ the stock dove ’ as the male of the turtle, Cowper as the male of ‘ the ring dove,’ and Wordsworth as the female of it.” Thomson does not mention the turtle dove, nor is the ring dove named by either Cowper or Wordsworth, while the latter does not allude to any species of dove with its mate.

Exception is also taken to certain poets’ references to the haunts and nesting of the stock dove : “ Cunningham’s hint of its nesting in the grove is suspicious, and Wordsworth’s

is, in Wordsworth especially, inadmissible ; for the stock dove does not build in trees, but (by preference) in rabbit holes.”

In Selby’s Illustrations of British Ornithology the stock dove is described as a “ constant inhabitant of woods, breeding in the hollows of old and pollard trees.”Morris (History of British Birds) says, “ It frequents woods, coppices, and groves, and these both in low and more hilly countries, suiting itself alike among oaks and fruit trees, beeches and firs, or any others that present facilities for building purposes ; ” also that the nest is placed “ ordinarily in any suitable holes in trees.” In Dresser’s Birds of Europe, “ fir-trees,” “ matted ivy, close to the trunks of cedars and fir-trees,” and “ holes of old trees” are mentioned among its nesting-places. Stephenson (Birds of Norfolk) states that this bird, although generally considered by naturalists as only an inhabitant of the woods, has, in a district of that county, the habit of resorting to rabbit warrens, and refers to Yarrell as authority for the opinion that it acquired its name from its habit of nesting in the “ stocks of old oak pollards.”

Among the “ poets’ dove-fictions ” of which our author had “ not space to speak,” is “ how vultures chase them.” One cannot well conjecture how much space would be needed to speak of this fiction as it deserves, but of the alarming extent to which it has prevailed in poetry this writer enables us to judge. From the “whole range of the poets” he has gleaned one couplet, the meaning of which approximates his interpretation of it: —

and in his one volume he has found space enough to allude to this passage at least five times.

Another of these fictions is “ how they had no galls, and were thus serenely mild.” According to the author’s poetical quotations, two poets have spoken of doves as “ gall-less,” and a third as “serenely mild,” the latter making no allusion to the absence of gall. Professor Owen (Anatomy of Vertebrates) says that the gall-bladder is constantly deficient in the dove tribe ; and the late Professor Garrod, prosector to the Zoölogical Society of London, in one of his scientific papers, specifically mentions those genera which include all the European and American species of doves as having no gall-bladder. Webster defines gall as the liquid found in the gall-bladder, consisting of the secretion of the liver mingled with that of the mucous membrane of the gall - bladder ; therefore, when the latter is absent, the gall must also be wanting. So it appears that Cowley and Oldham, writing more than two centuries ago of gall-less doves, referred to a very singular fact in the natural history of these birds, — a fact which seems also to have been known to a poet of a much earlier day ; for Shakespeare allows Hamlet to say, —

Another statement, of the truth of which these quotations do not furnish any proof, is that the poets, following tradition, make the dove “lift its head after every draught, ’ to thank the Giver,’ ” — a remark which is supplemented by this note : " As a matter of fact, pigeons have not this prettily significant gesture. It is reserved for the cock-andhen tribes.” The accuracy and the pertinency of this note may be seen by an extract from the account of pigeons in Cassell’s Book of Birds (edited by Professor Jones from the text of Dr. Brehm) : “ They are also remarkable for their mode of drinking, in which they differ from all other birds. The general practice of birds in drinking is to take up a small portion of water in the bill, and then, by raising the head, to allow it to run down into the throat ; the pigeons, on the contrary, dip their bills into the water, and hold them there till they have quenched their thirst.” So the " prettily significant gesture” is not " reserved ” for any tribe, but is characteristic of all birds except doves.

Again, speaking of the poets’ " curious fancy ” in making the singing nightingale female, the writer says that “in nature only the male nightingale sings, and then always to his brooding mate;" yet that in poetry this is overlooked ; that Milton and Gilbert White knew the " solemn bird of night ” was a male. On a previous page he included with them Montgomery, but excluded the rest. If Milton knew the fact, as is possible, may we not infer that other poets also were aware of it, who nevertheless sometimes disregarded it in their poems, as Milton generally did, and as this writer himself has done in the concluding paragraph of his chapter on the nightingale, where he speaks of the “ sweet queen of song,” and of " her surpassing melody ” ?

But should not Spenser, and Cowper, and Coleridge, and Tennyson, and many other poets, some of whom are sometimes and others always accurate in regard to this, be taken into account when speaking of poetry ? The very expression of the criticism that the bird " sings always to his brooding mate” is, as far as it is correct, an expression of the poets themselves. Southey and Morris write of his " telling his tale ” or his " lovesong to his brooding mate.” Kingsley has it to “ his listening mate.” But that the bird sings always to his brooding mate is not true. The male birds arrive in England two weeks, more or less, earlier than the females. This fact has been expressly noticed by ornithological writers. Rev. C. A. Johns (British Birds in their Haunts) says that the male birds sing from their “ first arrival until the young are hatched also, that it has been fancifully said that they employ the interval before the coming of their mates in “ contending for the prize in a musical contest. " Charles Tennyson Turner has made this singing of the nightingale before the arrival of the female the theme of one of his sonnets.

“ It is doubtful, indeed,” continues our critic, “ whether the poets were aware that the nightingale was a summer migrant only. Waller and Carew knew it, Mrs. Hemans suspected it, but there is no evidence in the rest of the great fact of the nightingale’s migration being known.” One poet speaks of it as a “ brief sojourner ; ” another questions it about the many months of its absence ; Keble inquires as to its

Wordsworth addresses it as “ wanderer,” and alludes to its “ migratory flight;” says Mrs. Browning, —

and Mant, —

Cochrane, also, —

We find one sonnet entitled To a Nightingale on its Return, and another, The Nightingale’s Departure. This seems like evidence, but our author’s views on evidence are not less peculiar than on other subjects. Referring to the turtle dove, he says (page 158), “ As I have already shown, it is used indifferently as the widow of ring doves and stock doves ; ” whereas he only repeats his own assertion, without citing a single passage to prove it.

One of the most remarkable statements in the book is that “ hardly a dozen references could be found to that summer miracle of every year, the nestbuilding of birds.” Bishop Mant’s poem, The British Months, which shows his most careful observation of bird-life, contains fifty references, at least, to this subject. Scores of British poets could be named, each of whom has mentioned it from once to a dozen times or more. The nest-making of birds belonging to many dozen species has been noticed. Details as to the time of nesting, place selected, materials made use of, tools employed, manner of building, different degrees of skill manifested, and the various results reached have been noted with surprising accuracy. This is seen not only in the poets’ minute descriptions of nests, both of very elaborate and of the most simple construction, but also in incidental allusions.

Among the birds that “ with more forward haste ” commence nesting is the hedge sparrow, that places

which, from being thus so unsheltered, is more likely to be appropriated by the cuckoo for her eggs, or plundered by the school-boy, both of which circumstances poets also note.

Bishop Stanley, in his Journal of our Starlings’ Lives, records that investigations preparatory to building are made in March. Kingsley had noticed the same, who thus wrote : —

But it is several weeks afterwards,

Most observers find the swallow nesting in May. Browning, absent from England, remembers that this month “ the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows.” “ Towards the end of April or the beginning of May,” says Yarrell, “should the season be favorable, the site of the nest is chosen.” Owen Meredith recognizes an April builder as early : —

The swallow returns at this season to the “ loved haunt which erst she knew,” as do some other birds: —

Nests of other species are placed in altogether different localities : —

while the curlew, which also frequents the shore, “ wisely ” builds her nest “ upon the moor that’s highest.”

Certain birds build in communities ; for instance, —

Other little colonists are mentioned by Jean Ingelow, — martins, which

Thomson observes that

The foundation of this “airy city ” may be where the trees

or, as Warton says,

Often it is

The frequent selection by rooks of building sites near schools and colleges leads us to inquire whether there can be another reason for it than the one suggested above, that they enjoy the noise and bustle of such establishments. Rev. J. G. Wood, in My Feathered Friends, tells us that he had from the window of his “ garret in college ” a view of the topmost branches of some fine elmtrees, which contained rooks’ nests, and adds that “ the rooks are especially under the collegiate protection.” The reminiscence of another Oxford graduate, well known in the scientific world, affords a similar hint: “ Once more are we seated beneath the old rook-trees in Christ Church meadow, and congratulating the dark proprietors of the village overhead that their fortunate settlement is within the protective influence of academic laws.”

One of the first things that a visitor notices on the school grounds at Rugby is the rookery. He is at once reminded of the evening when Tom Brown and his “little chum” looked from the west window of the latter’s sick-room “into the tops of the great feathery elms, round which the rooks were circling and clanging,” young and old “ talking in chorus ;” of the boys’ wonder as to whether the “ old blackies ” did talk or have prayers ; and of Tom’s pertinent conclusion, in view of some remorseful recollections which it is not difficult to surmise, that Doctor Arnold, for “ stopping the slinging,” must be gratefully remembered in the rooks’ prayers. And we are inclined to speculate, half seriously, whether rooks place themselves consciously under the protection of academic laws.

Like towns terrestrial, these “ towns aerial ’mid the waving tree ” are of gradual growth. Poets have remarked that birds “ mend ” “ and retrim their nests.” As early as February the rook commences operations. According to Gilbert White,

And Mant further notes the fact that the old birds reserve to themselves the easier task —

remorselessly imposing upon the younger members of the commonwealth the burden of constructing

also that they combine to punish any thoughtless or lawless young citizen that may attempt to shirk and help himself to a house or materials already prepared. Herons also are gregarious in nesting, and

or a “social city beside the moist fen.”

It has been remarked that there is as much individuality in the nest as in the bird. The instinct that prompts the song thrush to build

and, says Clare,

The plastic substance and bits of decayed wood which compose the thin but water-tight lining of the thrush’s nest are prepared, smoothed, and given a “cup-like” shape by the bird’s own

Another early builder is the blackbird:

Other birds make use of very different materials. The kingfisher

One of the curiosities of bird architecture is the nest of the long-tailed titmouse: an “ oval ball of moss,” with a “window in the wall,” and “as full of feathers as can be ; ” wrought by the little creature

The blue tit fits up the interior of his domicile with some soft substance, and uses spiders’ webs for finishing : —

The wren’s nest, “ close and vaulted o’er,” with its “ little gateway porch,” and with the “ finest plumes and downs ” so “ softly warped ” within, is a marvel of skill, but the pictures of Grahame and Wordsworth scarcely fail of doing justice to the exquisite workmanship of the little architect. Not less interesting, perhaps, is Mary Howitt’s description of the sparrow’s “ uncostly nest: ”

Poets have observed the simple construction of the wood-pigeon’s “ sprigformed nest,” —

and how

Sometimes the furnishing within is of the most costly material. The eider duck, that rears her young on bleak northern islands, lines her nest thickly with the beautiful down of her own breast; not once, merely, but, if the nest is plundered, until her own supply is exhausted, and then, says Hartwig in his Polar World, “ with a plaintive voice she calls her mate to her assistance, who willingly plucks the soft feathers from his breast to supply the deficiency,” the down furnished by the latter being recognized by those that rob these nests as whiter than that of the female. In the following extract, the soul of a lady in purgatory is represented as speaking: —

Surely

The author of The Paradise of Birds was not ignorant of their nesting habits :

Other British birds construct hanging nests : —

It is a British poet that bids the golden oriole its

The nest of the chaffinch displays in a striking manner the protective power of instinct. “ It is,” observes Morris (Nests and Eggs of British Birds), “usually so well adapted to the color of the place where it is built as to elude detection from any chance passer-by ; close scrutiny is required to discover it.” Sometimes it is, as described by another,

Hurdis culls attention to the apparent disadvantages under which a bird labors : —

But Courthope makes the birds claim that the advantages of knowing how to use both tools and materials are with them rather than with man : —

Nor are these examples found exclusively in modern poets, or those even since the time of Thomson. Marvell notes that the corn crake builds in a hollow “ below the grass’s root; ” Milton, that

Shakespeare, that

utilizing every “ jutty,” “frieze,” “buttress,” and “ coigne of vantage ; ” and a hundred years before, Skelton had observed that the nest of the stork was made on “ chymneyes to rest.” That birds occasionally are found nesting in very unexpected places has been sometimes taken advantage of by poets. Leigh Hunt’s The Trumpets of Doolkarnein and Cowper’s The Chaffinch’s Nest are notable examples of this.

So far from its being true that this wonderful chapter in bird history has been almost wholly neglected by British poets, it could hardly be too much to say that any one wholly ignorant of the subject might become quite well informed as to the nesting habits of British birds by a careful reading of British poetry. Some of the most apt expressions employed by ornithological writers, even of the present day, seem almost to have originated with the poets.

The author’s assertion that the turtle dove is “ habitually described as lamenting her dead ’ stock dove,’or ‘ ring dove,’ ” and the fact that his quotations from the poets do not show even an attempt to prove it, have been mentioned. He goes on to say that she is “ as such condoled with, while all the time the bird has just come from Syria, where it hatched a brood of young ones only three months ago, and now, mated to another spouse, is again the happy mother of another couplet.”

Three months before the arrival of the turtle dove in England, the last of April or beginning of May, it is in its winter haunts. That, as a rule, birds do not nest in their winter quarters seems to be evident. Once a year, as is well known, birds have the impulse to mate. This impulse is accompanied by a remarkable physical vigor, which produces very striking changes in their appearance and habits : —

and

This change of plumage is apparent to a greater or less extent in all the birds with which we are acquainted, and “spring plumage,” “nuptial attire,” “ wedding dress,” are common forms of expression in describing birds.

The vocal organs are also especially strengthened and excited, so that the music of birds is one of the most noticeable features of spring. Even the notes of those not usually considered singing birds are modified during this period : —

Peculiar gestures are observed, which Professor Newton speaks of as “ akin to the song.” The beginning, duration, and ending of this season vary, lasting with some species until two or three broods are hatched. These are matters of common observation in respect to the resident British birds, among which are numbered many of the most familiar species. After this term is past, the seasonal plumes and tufts and the exceptional brilliancy of plumage disappear, the song for the most part ceases, and there is no recurrence of them until another spring. It is said to be a fact (Blackwall’s Researches in Zoölogy) that “ most songsters are absolutely unable to continue their melodious strains beyond the latter end of July or the beginning of August.” Whatever prolongation of this period there may be in the case of cage birds and domestic fowls is thought to be due to the constant supply of nutritious and suitable food, and it is probable that occasional irregularities in the nesting of wild birds may be in part thus explained.

At this season many birds have the instinct to migrate,—

The winter habits of some of the migratory birds are well known, for they leave the north to winter in England. These birds do not nest in England in the winter, but return in spring to the northern regions, and rear their young ones in their own old homes. The number of birds that remain in New England throughout the year, or that migrate from the north to winter with us, is comparatively small, but no winter nesting has been noticed here. Obviously, then, we must infer that the birds that come from the south to enliven the spring of Great Britain and New England by their beauty and their song return in the autumn mute and “ sobersuited,” sometimes to moult, at any rate to rest, but not to nest, in their winter quarters ; in other words, that the nesting impulse is annual, and that birds do not mate a second time in their places of winter resort.

The correctness of this inference is confirmed by the reports of residents and explorers in the countries which become the winter homes of migratory birds. Dr. Klunzinger, for many years resident in Egypt, whose volume on Upper Egypt includes sketches of natural history, says that “on the whole the singing of birds is not heard in Egypt, as the birds that pass through or winter in the country do not sing in the winter season.” The late Professor A. L. Adams (Notes of a Naturalist in the Nile Valley and Malta) speaks of certain song birds as “ mute from their arrival [at Malta] in October up to the beginning of March.”

During a winter passed in Tennessee, Mr. Wilson Flagg gave particular attention to the birds in the woods near Nashville, and he remarks that “ not one was heard to sing.” Florida is on the route of passage for the migratory birds of Northeastern America, and becomes the winter abiding place of many of them. Mr. J. A. Allen has written a comprehensive paper on the winter birds of East Florida, based on the observations of Messrs. Maynard and Boardman as well as his own, the researches of the three being, he thinks, equivalent to the labors of a single individual constantly in the field for at least four or five winters. But Mr. Allen’s record shows no winter nesting of these birds. Audubon, who spent so many years in extensive journeyings over our continent, sometimes with the special design to trace the migrations of birds, could not have failed to note a circumstance so interesting as the nesting in a Southern State of the winter migrants there. The specimens of nests, eggs, or skins of young birds of migratory species contained in our large museums of natural history have not been obtained from their winter retreats. Brehm (Bird - Life) states his opinion very positively in regard to this : “ Not a single migratory bird makes a new home ; not one builds a nest or breeds in a foreign land ; ” and Seebohm (Siberia in Europe) says, “ We may lay it down as a law, to which there is probably no exception, that every bird breeds in the coldest regions of its migrations. . . . The well - authenticated stories of birds breeding a second time in the place of their winter migration probably have the same scientific value as the stories of swallows having been found hibernating in caves and hollow trees, or of toads having been found in the recesses of otherwise solid rocks.” Still, a rule which is general may not be universal, and some naturalists take exception to so unqualified a statement of this law. Harting (Our Summer Migrants) even thinks that many birds which summer in England and nest there, “ must also nest in what we term their winter quarters.” But he draws this conclusion from some cases that seem to him to be authenticated, and from certain inferences of his own respecting a few other birds. One instance is that of the red-backed shrike, said by Andersson (Birds of Damara Land) and others to nest in South Africa in our winter. Mr. Harting also mentions two species of sand martin. One of them, the ordinary representative of the English sand martin (our bank swallow) in India and the countries eastward, is vouched for by Mr. Edward Blyth, a field naturalist of much experience, and for more than twenty years curator of the Asiatic Society’s Museum in Calcutta. “ The only birds known to me,” writes Mr. Blyth, “ that breed in their winter quarters are two species of sand martin. In India I have been familiar enough with birds in their winter quarters, and have no hesitation in asserting that migratory species (with the remarkable exceptions named) do not even pair until they have returned to their summer haunts. Were they to do so, I could not but have repeatedly noticed the fact, and must needs have seen very many of their nests and young. . . . That our British sand martin breeds in Egypt during the winter months,” continues Mr. Blyth, “ is noticed in the Proceedings of the Zoölogical Society for 1863 (page 288).” This case I find to be on the authority of Canon Tristram, whose language is, “ I found it breeding in Egypt in February.” Now Mr. J. H. Gurney, Jr., in his Rambles of a Naturalist, says of this bird, “ The first of the spring migrants. On the 21st of February they appeared [in Egypt] in large flocks. . . . On the 6th of March they had commenced nesting operations at Siout.” Some persons, no doubt, would regard this nesting which Canon Tristram observed in February, as a proof not of the bird’s nesting in its winter quarters, but of an exceptionally early arrival. These are the only cases that I understand Mr. Harting to mention as authenticated.

To return to the turtle dove. We find no evidence of its being an exception to the general rule that migratory birds do not nest in the places of their winter resort. Captain Shelley (Birds of Egypt) remarks, " This turtle dove is abundant throughout Egypt and Nubia in the spring. It frequently breeds in the country. I first met with it on the 20th of April at Edfoo [four hundred miles or more from the coast], when it had evidently just arrived.”Dresser (Birds of Europe) informs us that it winters in Africa ; that it is a summer visitant in Northwest Africa ; that vast numbers arrive at the African side of the Straits of Gibraltar, to cross in flocks during April and May; that in September and October this bird returns there, to retire south for the winter; that it has been met with as far south as ten degrees north latitude; also that it visits Northeast Africa regularly in the spring and autumn. Mr. Gurney, who first saw it in Egypt, April 2d, observed that the tide of birds pressed through Egypt northward in April ; that by the last of the month the main troop had passed ; and that when these and a few stragglers had disappeared he “ saw no more birds except the residents and a few turtle doves, rufous warblers, etc., which had found their journey’s end sooner than the main body, and were already commencing the duties of incubation, not to migrate any more until the returning wave in autumn should impel them south again.” From these notes it appears that the bird migrates through Egypt as well as Northwest Africa, both north and south, and that at the time of the spring migration some remain to nest, as birds of this and of other species do at various places on their routes of passage; and Captain Shelley’s account affords no proof that the bird nests in its winter quarters, but strongly implies the contrary. But while a few do not leave Egypt, the most of them pass northward, vast numbers staying in Palestine, where, as Canon Tristram says, suitable food being extremely plentiful, they are more abundant than in any other country that they inhabit. According to Dresser, however, they do not remain there through the winter, and on this point the testimony of Canon Tristram is most explicit. Speaking of its use for sacrificial offerings, he says, “ The turtle dove is a migrant, and can only be obtained from spring to autumn ; ” and again, “ Its return in spring is one of the most marked epochs in the ornithological calendar. . . . Search the glades and valleys even by sultry Jordan, at the end of March, and not a turtle dove is to be seen. Return in the second week in April, and clouds of doves are feeding on the clovers of the plain. . . . So universal, so simultaneous, so conspicuous, their migration that the prophet might well place the turtle dove at the head of those birds which ‘ observe the time of their coming.’ ” It is evident, then, that it does not winter even in the southern part of Syria.

In his important paper on the migration of birds, August Weissmann speaks of it as a well-known fact that the migratory birds that cross the Mediterranean make the transit only at certain fixed points, naming four, the first of which from the west is the Straits of Gibraltar. It is easy to see that the natural crossing place of the birds that migrate from Africa to Great Britain is the Straits of Gibraltar ; also that the birds that cross at the more eastern points would naturally reach, not England, but the continent of Europe, Syria, and Asia Minor. Harting’s Our Summer Migrants includes about fifty birds, and in Colonel Irby’s Ornithology of the Straits of Gibraltar we find nearly every one of them noted as a bird of passage at that point. So there seems to be no probability that the turtle dove ever comes to England from Syria.

The phrase " mated to another spouse ” suggests a question which naturalists answer with great caution, although it presents no difficulty to this writer. Dresser, giving the characteristics of the genus Turtur (turtle doves), says, “ They are strictly monogamous, and are said to pair for life.” According to various ornithological writers, the same is believed to be true of rock doves (including tame pigeons, all the varieties of which are thought to have sprung from this species) ; and Canon Tristram remarks that “ from its fidelity to its mate and its habit of pairing for life, among other reasons, the dove was selected as a symbol of purity and an appropriate offering by the ancient heathens as well as the Jews.” We must therefore inevitably conclude that the turtle dove does not rear a brood three months before its arrival in England, for it is then in its winter quarters, and it does not nest in its winter quarters ; that it does not winter in Syria, but migrates into Syria in the spring, and nests there afterwards ; that it does not come to England from Syria; also that it probably pairs for life : and that therefore the assertion, as quoted above, is erroneous and misleading in every particular.

The author thus expresses himself (page 442) on the migration of the swallow : “ In swallow life, again, there is one episode above all the rest instinct with significance, — the mustering of these little sun-worshipers for the great autumnal pilgrimage. No one seeing them even once could fail to understand the meaning of this gathering of the feathered clans. . . . Nor can there be more than one explanation of those sudden impulses to launch out into the deep-sea air, often checked as soon as they arise, but as often tempting the little travelers to take just one, and then another, and then a third preliminary sweep round the sky. Yet Thomson, after watching them diligently, came to the conclusion that they were gathered ‘ for play,’ and were having one last good game together ’ ere to their wintry slumbers they retired! ’ It is true he gives them the choice of

or of being ‘ conveyed into warmer climes;’ but it is almost incomprehensible that he should have even given them a choice.”

This opinion that only one explanation of these swallow gatherings is possible, and that for this only one observation is necessary, also the reproach of Thomson (spoken of elsewhere as so often absurd, and in similar terms) for any doubt he may have had, show our critic’s usual discrimination.

In the time of Thomson and much later, the common interpretation of the disappearance of swallows was that they hibernated. Dr. Johnson remarked to Boswell, “ Swallows certainly sleep all winter. A number of them conglobulate together, by flying round and round, and then all in a heap throw themselves under water, and lie in the bed of a river.” More than this, one of the greatest scientists of any age, Linnæus, who was a contemporary of Thomson, evidently considered the then prevalent theory as established ; for in his Systema Naturæ, published a few years after Thomson’s Autumn, he names certain species of swallow that “ demerge ” at the approach of winter and with the return of spring “emerge.”

This, however, was not the only explanation possible. Thomson had another, which seemed to him more reasonable, — that of migration, as is shown by the very passage referred to : —

The theory of migration, to be sure, did not originate with the poet. Ray, the great English naturalist of the previous century, had not long before discussed the question whether swallows did not migrate to the moon ; concluding, however, that they did not. But the lines of Thomson, quoted above, are without doubt among the earliest expressions from any British poet, philosopher, or naturalist so decidedly in favor of the rational theory of the migration of swallows, and as such are a striking monument to the poet’s advanced views on the subject. The correspondence of Gilbert White shows not only his own but the doubts of other prominent naturalists of the last century on this question. Letters of Mr. White, written forty years after Thomson’s poem, contain many passages like this (which referred to a late brood of house martins, a species of swallow) : “ Or rather, is it not more probable [than that they migrate] that the next church, ruin, chalk cliff, steep covert, or perhaps sandbank, lake, or pool (as a more northern naturalist would say), may become their hibernaculum, and afford them a ready and obvious retreat? ” Mr. White even wrote some verses on the torpidity of swallows in winter, drawing from their revival in spring a lesson on the resurrection, which Jesse, in his Gleanings in Natural History, has given from the unpublished manuscript of Mr. White. Cuvier, in his Animal Kingdom, published nearly a hundred years after Thomson’s Autumn, thus writes of the bank swallow: “ It appears to be unquestionable (constant) that it becomes torpid in the winter, and passes that season at the bottom of marshy waters.” Even now the subject of hibernation is not beyond the pale of literature or of controversy. One of the most distinguished ornithologists of the present day, Dr. Coues, gives several pages of his Birds of the Colorado Valley (1878) to the question, “ Do swallows hibernate ? ” In the course of this discussion, he says that he supposes our chimney swifts hibernate in hollow trees, and that he could give reasons for the supposition; also that the “ most wary or the most timid student may be assured that he will find himself in perfectly respectable company, whichever side of the fence he may fall on.”

I have avoided direct reference to our author’s faults of style, since my purpose has been to inquire into the truth of his theory ; but perhaps attention ought to be directed to his strange use of words, which often renders it impossible to see that his expressions have any significance. What does the word “ pleiad ” mean in his phrase “ the pleiad of the doves ” ? There is no group of seven to which the writer can have referred. The stormy petrel takes its name “ petrel ” or “ peterel ” (little Peter) from its appearing to run on the top of the waves. In what sense is this “ name itself a tragedy”? “The bittern’s very name is poetry.” Bittern is thought to be a corruption of Botaurus (the scientific name of the genus), from bos and taurus. The author of British Birds in their Haunts gives a different etymology. “It is,” he says, “called Botaurus because it imitates boatum tauri, the bellowing of a bull,” — a truly poetical name. Not to multiply these examples, I will give but one more, the striking passage with which our critic concludes his strictures as to the poets’ treatment of the nightingale: “ Yet with all their compliments, the poets, so it seems to me, do not satisfy even the poetical requirements of the actual facts, nor in any measure exhaust the poetry of the natural bird. . . . Nor are the unnatural merits imagined by the poets — that it scorns to mix its song with that of other birds, and that it alone of all songsters undertakes the task of gladdening the gloomy hours of night — so poetical as the real circumstances, the modesty that makes the ‘sweet queen of song’ merge her surpassing melody into the general choir of nature during the hours of daylight, the dignity of self-respect that leads it to reserve yet one anthem more in glad thankfulness for night. Milton, Keats, and Shelley are able to grasp in its full compass the exquisite significance of the parable of the nightingale, and of night with this her solemn bird; but it eludes most.”

A goodly array of words, but what does it all mean ? An appeal is made from the poets’ false fancies to the “ actual facts,” the “ real circumstances.” But no one for a moment imagines that it is “ modesty,” or a real desire that its song, by being “ merged into the general choir,” may be disregarded, that prompts the nightingale to sing by day; or that it is from a sense of its own “ dignity ” and “ self-respect ” that it sings at night. Moreover, what is the propriety in saying that the bird “ reserves yet one anthem more ” for night, when, as is well known, it sings at intervals throughout the night? What does the word “ parable ” signify here ? We have had occasion to speak of this writer’s comments on Milton and the nightingale ; Keats and Shelley are freely criticised and misquoted by him, and the “glaring errors” of the latter are recounted with the same zeal that he has shown in regard to other poets ; and again we ask, What is this parable, the exquisite significance of which, in its full compass, these three poets, in distinction from others, have not failed to grasp ?

The value of the author’s notes and criticisms can be estimated from the preceding.

In the second part of the volume we have a Synopsis of the Poets’ References to Birds, Arranged Alphabetically according to Species. If these references are really arranged according to any system, the basis of it is quite beyond our comprehension. Quotations on the albatross are found, not among the A’s, where we naturally look for them, but among the S’s, under the head of Sea-Fowl, which is not a specific but a general term, including hundreds of species. The canary bird and the parrot are classed together “ alphabetically ” in the “ species ” of Cage Birds. A quotation on chats and linnets is found under the head of Water-Wagtail. Of the six extracts in this division, only two refer to the wagtail; the other four, to birds belonging to at least six species and three families, none of them, however, to the same family, even, as the wagtail.

But, what is of far more importance, this collection is in no sense what it professes to be, — a synopsis of the poets’ references to birds. The American poets, who manifest “ such an engaging pitifulness ” and “ Buddhistic kindness” to “ things in fur and feathers,” are represented by two lines from Longfellow. Assuming what we are nowhere told, that the author’s design was to include only British poetry, we are led to inquire why we find nothing from Edwin Arnold, whom the compiler of these extracts calls the “latest evangelist ” of this “ tender gospel of sympathy ; ” or from Tennyson or Morris, who (with one or two earlier poets, not named) are designated as “ conspicuous exceptions” to the “systematized lack of sympathy with the natural world" " betrayed ” in the “whole range of British poetry;” or from dozens of British poets, who, by the general character of their poetry, or by one or more notable poems, have shown their interest in birds. Complaint is urged repeatedly respecting the poets’ failures in this or that particular, when the failure has been simply on the part of the caviler to mention poems and extracts.

The author quotes from Marmion “the snowy ptarmigan,” having previously told us that in “ all the rest of the poets ” there is nothing more on this bird, although its attachment to the north, its love of the cold, and its striking change of plumage are themes most appropriate for poetry. It is certainly a curious circumstance that one conversant with the whole range of British poetry should have overlooked not only Scott’s references to the bird with one exception, but those of other Scotch poets. Hogg designates it as the “inmate of the cloud.” Moir gives many vivid pictures of the ptarmigan as a “ wintry bird,” bringing to the mind visions of “naked, treeless shores,” where “ far north the daylight dies,” and as a frequenter of the “ herbless peak,” a “ habitant ’twixt earth and sky ; ” also of its “ cloud-embattled nest,” asking, —

English poets have written of “ ptarmigans, too, from the regions of snow ; ” the “ close-feathered ” leg and foot, the

and the autumn colors of “ mottled gray” before the bird

have not been forgotten.

Again, the writer remarks, “ Or as expressing the quiet gloom of the woodland in the moth-time, what more striking than the word ‘night-jar’? Yet only once (in Gilbert White, a naturalist) do we find it, finely supplementing the worn-out old owl.” This bird is known by several names ; that of Gilbert White, in the passage cited by our author, being not night-jar, but churnowl. Wordsworth, who employs still another name for it, has several times emphasized the “ soft darkness ” and the “ silence deeper far than deepest noon ” of the twilight or evening hour by mentioning the “ busy dor-hawk,” which “ chases the white moth with burring note.” The author of The British Months, in his description of the nightjar’s habits, speaks of its “ issuing forth in evening gloom,” to

I recall other poems on this “ nocturnal haunter of the homeless sky,” whose

It is more than once implied in regard to sea-mews that they have received no special attention from the poets, but are only “ thrown in as adjuncts of sea scenery.” The poems on this bird by Mrs. Browning and Jean Ingelow (not to mention others) cannot be unfamiliar to most readers of English poetry.

This synopsis fails more in respect to what is contained iu it than in what is omitted. The extracts are often too brief to give any idea of the poets’ treatment of the birds ; yet very frequently the references are so inaccurate, both as to poems and authors, that they would not be of service to any one desiring to investigate for himself. I will point out some of the ways in which this inaccuracy is shown.

Quotations are ascribed to the wrong authors. For example, the line “ Over his own sweet voice the stock dove broods,” from one of Wordsworth’s best known poems, is credited (page l73) to Grahame ; stanzas from William Howitt’s familiar poem, The Departure of the Swallow (page 445), to W. Smith ; and an extract from Keats’s Epistle to Charles Cowden-Clarke (page 451), to Shelley. Not only so, but the same passage is sometimes attributed to more than one author.

Again, translations are assigned to the translators as original poems, to whom is also imputed the motive which prompted the writing of them. A poem on the swallow, by a Greek poet, Evenus, is (page 450) ascribed to Cowper, the latter being one of numerous translators of it; but elsewhere the writer, speaking of the swallow, says, “ Cowper sees it catch a locust, and remonstrates with it,” and cites in illustration a stanza from this poem. This must be the first time since literature has had a history that a poet has been made responsible for the conception of a poem, written as the result of his personal experience, more than two thousand years before he was born. On page 449 is another poem of which Cowper, who translated it, is here made the author. A line of this poem becomes (page 441) the text of another equally forcible criticism : “ Cowper even pretends that there is not tradition enough [about the swallow], and concocts a fiction for himself, — that it sleeps on the wing ! It is had enough that he did not purge himself of that same heresy with regard to the bird of paradise ; but that he should extend it with a high hand to the swallow is intolerable.” What the author of the poem intended to say we are not now considering, but for this poet’s intention Cowper is not accountable ; furthermore, as to the bird of paradise, it is not mentioned in Cowper’s poems, and we have no means of knowing what he thought about it.

However, errors respecting the authorship of poems do not affect their intrinsic merit. Poetry is poetry, whoever writes it; and there still remain, it may be thought, the quotations themselves, making a compilation of the poets’ own expressions about birds, which must of necessity be invaluable. Unfortunately, this is not so. Not even the poetry is left to us. An extract is frequently transposed, so that lines which belong at the beginning of it come in the middle or at the close. Very often, by the substitution of one word for another, or by the omission or insertion of words, phrases, or of one or more lines, a passage is transformed, with utter disregard to rhyme, metre, syntax, or sense; and to this end the printers seem to have ingeniously and cordially conspired, although I am by no means disposed to include among typographical errors all that might at first appear to be such. I will give a few examples of the curious manner in which British poets are persistently travestied in that part of this volume in which it is claimed that they speak for themselves. Take quotation (44), page 318 : —

The metre of Crashaw’s Music’s Duel (not Music Duel, as given above) is the rhymed iambic with five accents; and the slightly prosaic second line of the quotation is made to do duty for five lines of the poem according to its author.

In the last line of the second quotation on page 451, “ afar ” takes the place of " a fay,” and Keats is thus made to say that the swan’s own

“ Male ” has been substituted for “ mute” in the extract from Wordsworth on page 452 : —

On page 470 occurs the following : —

The second line of the above should finish the sentence in which it stands, and read thus : —

The two lines that follow do not belong to this poem.

Thomson has a delightful picture of the redbreast in winter, commencing with these lines : —

On page 33 of his notes our author gives this description, adding that “the fidelity to nature in this well-known quotation invests the passage with a rare charm.” If the passage as he misquotes it has a “ rare charm,” it cannot be on account of its fidelity to nature, since the poet’s expression “ the embroiling sky ” has been replaced by “ the broiling sun,” a term suggestive of American summer days rather than of those of an English winter.

Our author thinks that a “ serious induction is only justified by a sufficient collocation of instances.” Without examining a tenth of the extracts with reference to errors like those last mentioned, I have found many more than a hundred, — sufficient, it would seem, to justify a serious induction as to this writer’s sense of what is due (even in the simple matter of quoting poetry) to himself as an author, to the poets whom he professes to quote, and to the public.

A hint of the spirit by which he was actuated in the preparation of this volume seems to be afforded by another of his avowals in the article already alluded to: “It has, then, been recently added to my other afflictions that I should have to go rooting about, like a trufflehunting poodle, in a great number of volumes of American verse for certain quotations that I needed.” This is the kind of study that has been given to a subject at once so broad and so important from its relations to nature, to science, and to literature.