Virgil's Bird- Knowledge. 217 



are found in Italy at the present day, partly by 

 comparing Virgil with Pliny and other Roman 

 writers, and where Virgil is using a Greek original, 

 by trying to discover, chiefly through Aristotle's 

 admirable book on natural history, what bird is 

 indicated by the Greek word translated, and 

 whether that bird is an Italian bird as well as 

 Greek, and therefore likely to be known to Virgil 

 at first hand. 



I am not going to trouble my readers with 

 much of the uninteresting detail of an inquiry 

 like this (in which indeed the game might seem 

 to be hardly worth the candle), but merely to give 

 them some idea of the bird-knowledge on which 

 this greatest of Roman poets drew, whether at 

 first or second-hand, for description or illustration ; 

 and in so doing to make clear to them, so far as I 

 can, the particular kinds of birds which he had in 

 his mind. I shall quote him in the original, but 

 shall add translations in footnotes : in the Georgics, 

 his poem of husbandry, I take advantage of a 

 poet's translation, that of my friend Mr. James 

 Rhoades, which cannot easily be outdone either in 

 exactness of scholarship or in beauty of diction ; 





