232 The Birds of Virgil. 



cultivated land, like the ' improbus anser,' and 

 other birds which Virgil in the first Georgic in- 

 structs the husbandman to catch with lime or net, 

 or to frighten away from the fields. 1 



Let us now turn to the big black birds of the 

 race of the Crows, which are always so difficult to 

 distinguish from one another : for the Roman 

 savant not less difficult than for our own un- 

 learned. There are to be found in Italy at the 

 present day the Raven, the Crow, the Rook, the 

 Jackdaw, the Chough, and the Alpine Chough ; 

 all of these seem to be fairly common and resident 

 in one or other part of the country, except our 

 familiar friends the Crow and the Rook, the 

 former of which is very rare, and the latter hardly 

 more than a bird of passage. We cannot of 

 course expect to find these accurately distin- 

 guished by the ancient Italians ; and there is in 

 fact still some uncertainty as to the identification 

 of certain birds of this kind mentioned by Virgil. 



The two commonest of these are the corvus and 

 the comix words which undoubtedly represent 

 two different species. The Roman augurs, who 

 1 Georg. i. 120, 139, 156, 271. 



