WAEBLEES IN ITALY AND GREECE. I3I 



a twitter or a quiet warble. Sundevall, the Swedish scholar- 

 naturalist, has pronounced this acanthis of Aristotle to be the 

 linnet ; a conclusion with which no one would be likely to agree 

 who is fresh from a sight of that lively bird in its splendid 

 summer plumage, or who knows its gentle twittering song. Let 

 us remember that Aristotle is of all naturalists, down to the 

 time of Willughby and Ray, the most exact and trustworthy, and 

 that when he uses an adjective to describe a bird or its voice, he 

 means something exact and definite, and is not talking loosely. 

 Before we try to come to a conclusion about the dmvdis, 

 let us note that Aristotle paentions another small bird, the 

 aKavBvWts, which, from the name, we may guess to have been 

 one of the same kind as the ocantMs. This bird builds a nest 

 which is round and made of flax, and has a small hole by way 

 of entrance. Now let us observe that Italy and Greece are 

 swarming for the greater part of the year with a variety of 

 those small brown or dusky-coloured birds which naturalists 

 roughly call 'warblers' — birds for the most part apt to creep 

 and lurk about in thickets or small trees, and having voices 

 more or less shrill, which may very well indeed be called 

 Xiyvpat. In England we have some species of this order which 

 are abundant in the summer; e.g. in Oxford, the chifichaff, 

 willow-wren, sedge-warbler, and reed^warbler- — the two former 

 of which build spherical nests on the ground with a small 

 entrance-hole. These birds correspond with both of Aristotle's 

 birds in being KuKo^toi — i. e. leading a poor lurking life ; 

 KOKdxpooi, as being all very sober-coloured and difficult to 

 distinguish from one another, even by a modern expert; in 



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