NOTES BY THE WAY 169 



the food, not in her beak like other birds, but in 

 her crop; she places her beak between the open 

 mandibles of her young, and fairly crams the food, 

 which is delivered by a peculiar pumping move- 

 ment, down its throat. She furnishes a capital il- 

 lustration of the eager, persistent newsmonger. 



"Out of their burrows like rabbits after rain" is 

 a comparison that occurs in " Coriolanus. " In our 

 Northern or New England States we should have to 

 substitute woodchucks for rabbits, as our rabbits do 

 not burrow, but sit all day in their forms under a 

 bush or amid the weeds, and as they are not seen 

 moving about after a rain, or at all by day ; but in 

 England Shakespeare's line is exactly descriptive. 



Says Bottom to the fairy Cobweb in "Midsum- 

 mer Night's Dream: " 



" Mounsieur Cobweb; good mounsieur, get you your weapons 

 in your hand, and kill me a red-hipp'd humble-bee on the top of a 

 thistle, and, good mounsieur, bring me the honey-bag." 



This command might be executed in this country, 

 for we have the "red-hipp'd humble-bee;" and we 

 have the thistle, and there is no more likely place 

 to look for the bumblebee in midsummer than on 

 a thistle-blossom. 



But the following picture of a "wet spell" is 

 more English than American : 



" The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain, 

 The plowman lost his sweat; and the green corn 

 Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard; 

 The fold stands empty in the drowned field, 

 And crows are fatted with the murrain flock." 



Shakespeare knew the birds and wild fowl, and 



