Corvus and Comix. 235 



wards, like that of most flesh-eating birds. Still 

 I must hold it probable that Aratus here used the 

 word for the rook, as he makes it gregarious, and 

 so, I think, did the Alexandrian scholar Theon, 

 who wrote a commentary on his poem. The 

 only other possibility is that he was thinking of 

 the Alpine Chough, a bird which he might possibly 

 have known, and one of thoroughly social habits. 

 But that Virgil, though he too probably knew 

 this bird, was not thinking of it when he wrote 

 the lines just quoted, I feel tolerably sure ; he 

 would most likely have used the word graculns 

 rather than corvus, which would seem never to 

 have been applied, like monedula and graculns, to 

 the smaller birds of the group, such as the Alpine 

 Chough and the Jackdaw. 



The second difficulty lies in the fact that the 

 Rook is now only a bird of passage in Italy, 

 never stopping to breed in the southern part of 

 the peninsula, and very rarely in the northern ; 

 while Virgil speaks of the corvi in the last-quoted 

 passage as loving to revisit their nests. But this 

 difficulty has been overcome by the delightful 

 discovery that the Rooks still stay and breed in 



