212 The Birds of Virgil. 



probable enough that the great plain of the Po 

 was still largely occupied by those dense forests, 

 the destruction of which is said to be the chief 

 cause of the floods to which the river is liable. 

 Much land must also have been still undrained 

 and marshy : and we can still trace in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Mantua the remains of those ancient 

 lake-dwellings which an ancient people had built 

 there long before the Gauls, from whom our poet 

 was perhaps descended, had taken possession of 

 the plain. These woods and marshes, as well as 

 the land which Roman settlers had tilled for vine 

 or olive, must have been alive with birds in 

 Virgil's day. There would be all the birds of 

 the woods, the pigeons and their enemies the 

 owls and hawks ; there would be cranes and 

 storks in their yearly migrations, and all manner 

 of water- fowl from the two rivers Po and Mincio, 

 and from the Lacus Benacus (Lago di Garda) 

 which is only about twenty miles distant. It 

 would be strange indeed, if, even when following 

 the tracks of a Greek poet, Virgil had not in his 

 mind some of the familiar sights on the banks of 

 Mincius. 



