22 BRITISH BIRDS 



come (not is coming for the bird is not the messenger 

 but the attendant of the spring), and may therefore be, 

 correctly enough, regarded as the first in the symphony 

 The of that ever welcome season. He has more to say of 

 Corn- he corncrake, or landrail, which he introduces at 

 evening, not on its first arrival, in the middle or 

 towards the end of April, along with the cuckoo and ieo 

 the nightingale, but in midsummer, when the green 

 corn is well grown, and as a shadowy gust of moist 

 warm wind sweeps over the waving field. He does 

 not present its figure which few have seen : it there- 

 fore remains invisible in his verse ; but the note is 

 well described as a clamouring call, and his theory of 

 its cry is one with which no naturalist will find fault, 

 for it is the right one. He names the bird, indeed, 

 the quail, but he means the corncrake, and he describes 

 it as ' clamouring for its running mate '. The scene in 1:0 

 the midst of which he places it is a charming presenta- 

 tion of summer gloaming. 



Poultry. There is a curious little passage in the poem of 

 Spring, devoted to what are commonly called our 

 domestic fowls, and including cock, hen, duck, swan, 

 turkey, peacock, and pigeon. These are still at the 

 home-farm of any well-appointed country-seat the 

 familiar representatives of our ' tame villatic fowl '. 

 Here Thomson hits off the picturesque peculiarity of 

 each bird with artistic skill, dwelling most elaborately iso 

 on the cock, the swan, and the pigeon. The whole 

 scene is better than a painted picture, because it is full 

 of life and movement. He depicts it more adequately 

 than greater poets have done. Milton's chanticleer, 



to the stack or the barn-door, 

 Stoutly struts his dames before ; 



