228 The Birds of Virgil. 



Here, as they fly before a southern wind, they are 

 on their way to the north in the spring. But in 

 another passage he seems rather to be thinking of 

 autumn ; it is where he is telling the husbandman 

 how to presage an approaching storm, such a 

 storm as descends in autumn from the Alps upon 

 the plains of Lombardy : 



Nunquam imprudentibus imber 

 Obfuit ; aut ilium surgentem vallibus imis 

 Aeriae fugere grues, aut bucula coelum 

 Suspiciens patulis captavit naribus auras, 

 Aut arguta lacus circumvolitavit hirundo. 1 



The general tenor of the whole passage of which 

 these lines are a fragment, as well as their original 

 in the Diosemeia of Aratus, points to the approach 

 of ' hiems,' the stormy season, as the event in- 

 dicated ; the falling leaves dance in air, the feathers 



even as under black clouds cranes from the Strymon utter 

 their signal notes and sail clamouring across the sky, and 

 noisily stream down the gale. Aen. x. 262 foil. 

 1 Never at unawares did showers annoy : 

 Or, as it rises, the high-soaring cranes 

 Flee to the hills before it, or, with face 

 Upturned to heaven, the heifer snuffs the gale 

 Through gaping nostrils, or about the meres 

 Shrill-twittering flits the swallow. Georgic i. 373. 



