133 THE BIRDS OF VIRGIL. 



occasionally af; least, in Italy. If this is due to persecution-, 

 the persecutors have made a great mistake. The Stork does 

 no harm to man, but rather rids his fields of vermin; the 

 Crane', ■which belongs to a different order of birds, may do 

 serious damage, as we have seen, to cultivated land, like the 

 ' improbus anser,' and other birds which Virgil in this first 

 Georgic instructs the husbandman to catch with lime or net, 

 or to frighten away from the fields.^ 



Let us now turn to the big black birds of the race of the 

 Crows, which are always so difficult to distinguish from one 

 another : for the Boman savant not less difficult than for our 

 own unlearned. There are to be found in Italy at the present 

 day the Eaven, th« Crow, the Kook, the Jackdaw, the Chough, 

 and the Alpine Chough ; all of these seem to be fairly common 

 and resident in one or other part of the country, except our 

 familiar friends the Crow and the Eook, the former of which is 

 very rare, and the latter hardly more than a bird of passage. 

 We cannot of course expect to find these accurately distin- 

 guished by the ancient Italians ; and there is in fact still some 

 uncertainty as to the identification of certain birds of this kind 

 mentioned by Virgil. 



The two commonest of these are the eorvus and the cornix — 

 words which undoubtedly represent two different species. The 

 Koman augurs, who were always busily engaged in observing 

 birds (and it were to be wished that they had observed them 

 to some better purpose), clearly distinguished corvus and cornix.^ 



1 Georff. i. 120, 139, 154, 271. 

 ' Cic. de Dill. i. 35. 



