■204 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



reader with only one small volume, " like the song of 

 ithe stormcock in the month of December." In Italy, 

 " represented so voluminously by different and indifferent 

 English travellers," 



"" the traveller cannot walk the streets in comfort, unless he has 

 his lavender-water with him," and " the Italians would confer 

 a vast benefit on society if they would deposit more fertilizing 

 matter in their fields and less in their streets ; or, in case the first 

 is not considered necessary, they might imitate the excellent 

 example of the good people of Edinburgh in the olden time, when 

 they had a man clothed in an ample surtout, crying up and down 

 the streets at night : ' Wha wants me ? ' " 



What struck him particularly there was the dearth of 

 combs. They must have been scarce in the time of 

 Horace, " for he remarks of Canidia, ' crines et incomptum 

 caput '." 



The Italian countryside he found as empty of bird- 

 life (he compared it with " Ovid's memorable descrip- 

 i;ion of Famine ") as it is to-day, thanks to the honour- 

 able tradition and habit in that refined people of dining 

 •off warblers. But the material for the entomologist, 

 if not the ornithologist, was to be found in the towns : — 



•" At the town of Monsilice there was nothing in the way of 

 Natural History, saving, that in passing along the street, there 

 was a goodly matron sitting on a stool, and with her thmnb nails 

 impaling poachers in the head of a fine young woman, probably 

 her own daughter." 



In the streets of Rome, recollecting a happy old custom, 

 he would stop the beasts of burden and cry out upon 

 them : " Benedicite, omnes bestice et pecora, Domino !" At 

 another time, being warned of the dangerous buffaloes 

 on the road to Naples, he spied a herd, advanced upon 

 them, " and immediately threw my body, arms and 

 legs into all kinds of antic movements, grumbling 

 loudly at the same time." They " took off, as fast as 

 they could pelt." At " otiosa Neapolis " the miracle 

 of St. Januarius receives a round dozen of pages. Sir 

 William Hamilton, our former Ambassador, wrote to 

 the Royal Society, he affirms, in 1767, in the follow- 

 ing words : " It is well attested that the eruption of 



