Natural Hiftory of the Ancients. 185 



Again, "with fhrill cries me flits around the 

 lakes" (Georg.," i. 377), "and hangs, with many 

 a twitter, her neft on the rafters" (ibid., iv. 307). 

 But a ftill more famous pafTage occurs in the 

 "^Eneid/'xii. 473, concerning which Gilbert White 

 writes pleafantJy, but as a practifed naturalift, in 

 his "Selborne" (ed. Bell, vol. i. 166). After re- 

 marking that the ancients were not wont to dif- 

 criminate between different fpecies as we are, he 

 concludes from many little touches in the picture, 

 that the poet (as in the two inftances quoted 

 already), was referring to the chimney-fwallow 

 rather than to its, comparatively fpeaking, more 

 clumfy brother, the martin : 



" As when the dufky fwallow darts athwart 

 Some rich man's fpacious halls and lofty courts 

 To catch on nimble wings her tiny prey, 

 Then bears it fpeedy to her prattling neft, 

 And now by empty portico me gleams, 

 Now twitters by the low-lying marfh." 



The woodpecker (picus) is happily connected 

 with another myth. Dryden's poetry is, again, 

 better here than his ornithology: 



" Circe long had loved the youth in vain, 

 Till love refufed, converted to difdain ; 

 Then, mixing powerful herbs, with magic art 

 She changed his form who could not change his heart, 

 Conftrained him in a bird and made him fly 

 With parti-coloured plumes, a chattering pie." 1 



The owl is another Virgilian bird. There are at 

 leaft four fpecies of fmall owls in Italy ; but the 

 poet generalizes them in the few yet telling lines 



1 Drydcn, u ^En.," vii. 189. 



