Natural Hiftory of the Ancients. 1 7 1 



It is eafy from this lift to fancy the park and 

 garden fcenery of Chaucer's times. 



With regard to the common fowl, there is no 

 evidence, they fay, of it in neolithic interments in 

 this country. They hold that it probably came 

 with the peacock by the way of Babylon to 

 Greece and Rome rather than by the Red Sea. It 

 is known from Buddhift writings that the ancient 

 Indian merchants took peacocks to Babylon. As 

 a pendant to Chaucer's vegetation the following 

 pre-Roman landfcape may be cited : " The con- 

 templation of a herd of dark-coloured mountain 

 cattle in the north of this country, of fmall fize, 

 and yet with ragged ' ill-filled ' out contours, 

 {landing on a wintry day in a landfcape filled 

 with birch, oak, alder, heath and bracken, has 

 often ftruck me as giving a picture which I might 

 take as being very probably not wholly unlike 

 that which the eyes of the ancient Britifh herdf- 

 man were familiar with" (p. 744). 



