318 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



have afforded many opportunities, which have been turned to 

 good account, for the quiet observation of some of the so-called 

 rarer British birds in some of their continental haunts. Com- 

 paratively little has been published in English on the birds of 

 Switzerland, and the chapter entitled " The Alps in September " 

 will on this account, as well as for the information which it 

 affords, be read with interest by every ornithologist. 



In the succeeding chapter on " the Birds of Virgil " (one of 

 the best in the book) we find ample proof that a knowledge of 

 natural history is a material aid to the proper understanding and 

 due appreciation of many passages in the works of this most 

 observant Latin poet. The brief sketch given of his home and 

 surroundings in early life (pp. 135 — 139) shows what opportunities 

 he must have enjoyed for a study of nature, and how well these 

 opportunities were subsequently turned to account : — 



" The first sixteen years of his life were spent in his native 

 country of Cisalpine Gaul, almost under the shadow of the Alps. 

 His parents were " rustic," and he was brought up amongst the 

 woods and rushy meads of Mantua and Cremona. At that time 

 probably the great plain of the Po was still largely occupied by 

 those dense forests the destruction of which is said to be the 

 chief cause of the floods to which the river is liable. Much land 

 also must have been still undrained and marshy ; and we can 

 still trace in the neighbourhood of Mantua the remains of those 

 ancient lake dwellings which an ancient people had built there 

 long before the Gauls (from whom the poet was perhaps 

 descended) had taken possession of the plain. These woods and 

 marshes, as well as the land which Eoman settlers had tilled for 

 vine or olive, must have been alive with birds in Virgil's day. 

 There would be all the birds of the woods, the Pigeons, Owls, 

 and Hawks ; there would be Cranes and Storks at the period 

 of their migrations, and all manner of waterfowl from the two 

 rivers Po and Mincio, and from the Lacus Benacus (Lago di 

 Garda), which is only about twenty miles distant. Later in life 

 he was as much in Southern as in Northern Italy. That the 

 first three Georgics were written, or at least thought out, on the 

 lovely Bay of Naples is tolerably clear from lines at the end of 

 the fourth Georgic. Here were all the sea-birds, and the wild' 

 fowl that haunt the sea ; here the summer migratory birds might 

 land on their way from Africa. Here, from the sea and all its 



