134 THE BIRDS OP VIEGIL. 



but in ttis case we have no means of determining the species 

 of which the poet was thinking. He used the word fulica, 

 a coot, to help him out in naming a bird which was something 

 like a coot, but a bird of the sea, and one for which he had 

 no word ready, or none that would suit his metre. 



Another beautiful passage is to be found in the twelfth book 

 of the Aeneid; it is one in which our poet is evidently 

 describing an everyday sight of an Italian spring and summer, 

 and writing independently of an original : — 



Nigra velnt magnas domim cum divitis aedea 

 PerTolat et pemuB alta atria lustrat hirundo, 

 Pabula parva legens, nidisque loquacibus esoas ; 

 Et nunc porticibus vaculs, nunc humida ciroum 

 Stagna sonat: eimilis medios Jutui-na per hostes 

 Fertur equis, rapidoque volans obit omnia curru.' 



Though it seems odd to compare to a swallow the fierce female 

 warrior careering in her chariot, it should be noted that 

 Juturna's object is not to fight, but by constant rapidity of 

 movement to keep Turnus and ^neas from meeting each 

 other. This simile is, I think, the most perfect passage ahout 

 the Swallow that I have ever met with in poetry. 



The hirwndo of the Eomans had of course a generic sense, 

 and included all the different species of Martin and Swallow. 

 When Virgil writes (Georg. iv. 107) of the chattering hvruTido 

 which hangs its nest from the beams, he clearly means the 



* Aen. xii. 473. Mr. Mackail translates: 'As when a black swallow 

 flits througli some rich lord's spacious house, and circles in flight in the 

 lofty haUs, gathering her tiny food for sustenance to her twittering 

 nestlings, and now swoops down the spacious colonnades, now round the 

 wet ponds,' &c. 



