I 86 Summer Studies of Birds and Books chap. 



as big as a Blackbird ; the third (jXia'f) is the smallest, 

 and less spotty {jroiK'CKo<i). Now we have only to 

 consult our lexicons to find out what No. 1 was : 

 l^o^opot; means "eating mistletoe" (viscus), and 

 the bird was plainly our Missel-thrush. 'No. 2 may 

 be also at once identified as the Song-thrush. No. 3 

 is, however, a puzzle. What thrush is there that is 

 smaller than the Song-thrush, and can we be sure 

 that Aristotle here really means a true thrush, and is 

 not confounding some other bird with the thrush 

 tribe ? There is of course a small thrush, our winter 

 friend the Eedwing, which still appears in Greece in 

 cold weather. But we must allow that Aristotle has 

 not told us enough about his bird to give us any 

 certain means of identifying it. 



But now comes a very singular statement about 

 thrushes. Speaking of them in general under the 

 term ici'x^'n, he says at the beginning of his fifth book 

 that they make their nests, like Swallows, of mud, and 

 place them in the high branches of trees, side by side 

 and touching one another, so that for this reason they 

 seem as it were a chain of nests.-^ This is at first 

 sight pure nonsense ; but it is as well to remember 

 that there actually is a thrush which builds very 

 much in the way here described. Is it possible that 

 Aristotle can have been informed of the peculiar 

 gregarious habits of the Fieldfare in the nesting 



' H. A. vi. 1. 3. 



