PEPACTON 



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 

 knew them perhaps as a hunter, as well as a poet. 

 At least this passage would indicate as much : 



"As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye, 

 Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort, 

 Rising and cawing at the gun's report, 

 Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky." 



In calling the choughs "russet-pated" he makes 

 the bill tinge the whole head, or perhaps gives the 

 effect of the birds' markings when seen at a dis- 

 tance; the bill is red, the head is black. The chough 

 is a species of crow. 



A poet must know the birds well to make one of 

 his characters say, when he had underestimated a 

 man, " I took this lark for a bunting," as Lafeu 

 says of Parolles in "All's Well that Ends Well." 

 The English bunting is a field-bird like the lark, 

 and much resembles the latter in form and color, but 

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