Il6 THE BIKDS OF TIEGIL. 



seek a cool climate for their breeding-places ; probably because 

 in very hot countries the food suitable to their nestlings will 

 not be found in the breeding-season. Has the climate of Italy 

 become hotter in the last two thousand years, discouraging 

 these birds from lingering south of the Alps ? 



This is an old question which has been well threshed out by 

 the learned, and the general conclusion seems to be in the 

 affirmative. The last eminent writer on the subject takes this 

 view,^ and his argument would receive a decided clinch if it 

 could be proved that certain kinds of birds, which formerly bred 

 in the country, do so no longer, and that this is not due to other 

 causes, such as the well-known passion of the Italians for killing 

 and eating all the birds on which they can lay their hands. 



If we now turn to the first Georgic, in which, following the 

 Greek poet Aratus with freedom and discretion, Virgil has told 

 us more of animal life than in all the rest of his poems, we find 

 frequent mention of the long-legged and long-billed birds with 

 which he must have been very famUiar in his boyhood at 

 Mantua. The first of these we meet with is the Crane 

 (Latin grus). About the meaning of the word griis there can» 

 be no doubt ; it would seem that the Crane was a bird accurately 

 distinguished by the forefathers of our modern Aryan peoples 

 even before they separated from each other. The Greek word 

 yipavos, the Latin grus, the German Kranich, and the Welsh 

 garan are all identical, and point to a period when the bird 

 was known by the same name to the whole race. Probably it 

 was much more abundant both in Europe and Asia, at a time 



' NiBsen, Italiache Landes&unde, p. 374. 



