BIRDS. 55 



reader, is as yet passed in tender dalliance and nest-building), from 

 copse and woodland, ring out the richest strains of our native 

 warblers, thrush, redbreast, blackbird, throstle, white-throat, wren 

 (whom the Germans, on account of his indomitable pluck and 

 pre-eminence as a songster, term the kingbird), and a score of other 

 " musical celebrities," vie with each other in the richness and 

 the melody of their incomparable song. Within a month, should 

 the weather continue favourable as at present, most of our wild- 

 birds will have finished their nests, and commenced the labours 

 of incubation. We trust that our readers will do all they can this 

 season to prevent children and others from what is called " birds'- 

 nesting," one of the most cruel pastimes to which any one could 

 turn himself. All good men, and most great ones, have been 

 remarkable for their attachment to animals, both domesticated and 

 wild, and particularly to song-birds. Listen to Virgil's passing 

 allusion to the subject in his Georgics, a magnificent poem, of 

 itself sufficient to immortalise the name of any one man : 

 " Qualis populea moerens Philomela, sub umbra," &c., 



thus rendered into English : 



" Lo, Philomela from the umbrageous wood, 

 In strains melodious mourns her tender brood, 

 Snatch'd from the nest by some rude ploughman's hand, 

 On. some lone bough the warbler takes her stand ; 

 The live-long night she mourns the cruel wrong, 

 And hill and dale resound the plaintive song." 



And hear our own matchless " ploughman bard," in one of his 

 sweetest lyrics, The Posie : 



" The hawthorn I will pu', wi' its locks o' siller grey, 

 Where, like an aged man, it stands at break o' day, 

 But the songster's nest within the bash I w'nina tak away 

 if And a' to be a posie to my ain dear May. " 



Verily, dear reader, he who wrote that verse, despite the pious 

 murmurings of the rigidly righteous, and the cold shudderings of 



