AUTHORS VERSUS DICTIONARIES. 135 



sub-alpine neighbourhood where Virgil passed his early life.^ 

 As I have remarked about the pigeons and the stork, the climate 

 may have been such as would induce some birds to stop south 

 of the great Alpine barrier, which now find there no climate 

 cool enough for breeding ; and the rook was perhaps a more 

 regular resident and breeder then than he is now. 



We may conclude then that Virgil's eorvus is our old friend 

 the Rook, even if some Latin authors use the word equally for 

 Eook, Crow, and Eaven. Pliny for example tells us {N. H. x. 23- 

 121) that the eorvus can be taught to speak (fancy a bird 

 talking Latin, that stiff and solemn speech !), that he eats flesh 

 for the most part, and that he sometimes makes his nest in 

 elevated buildings ; feats which we are not used to associate 

 with Rooks. In fact it is plain that Pliny, who was more of a 

 learned book-reader than a careful observer of the minutiae of 

 nature, was not quite clear in his notions about the big black 

 birds. But if we can be pretty sure about eorvus, what is Virgil's 

 cornix, stalking on the shore in solitary state, and uttering 

 admonitory croaks from the hollow holm-oak ? If we consult 

 dictionaries we shall learn that cornix is the Crow or Book, 

 'a smaller bird than eorvus.'^ Where did the dictionaries get 

 this authority for making confusion worse confounded ? If Virgil 

 distinguished eorvus and cornix, and if eorvus is the rook, then 

 cornix must be the crow or the raven, and in fact the word probably 

 stands for both. I should incline on the whole to the raven, seeing 

 that at the present day it is much the commoner bird of the two in 

 Italy. Alpine choughs and jackdaws are not wont to stalk about 



* See Newton's Ya/rrell, ii. 290. 



