150 ON BIRDS NAMES. 
poets are ornithologists. Poetry teems with references to 
birds ; they enter into every scene; whether it be the Sea- 
mew in the ocean storm, the Swan viewing its image in the 
placid lake, the Eagle screaming from the mountain cliff, or 
the Thrush warbling from the flowery thicket, their 
singing, their nesting, their annual journeys, are called on to 
appeal to all our tenderest feelings. In a host of birds—the 
Eagle, the Dove, the Raven, the Swan, the Pelican, the Owl, 
—in “the rage of the Vulture, the love of the Turtle,” poets 
have found a simile for man’s fiercest passions, highest 
ambitions, or dearest hopes. 
Should it be that we have to lay down our Shakes- 
peare or our Wordsworth, and take up our ornithological 
text-book, before we can comprehend some passage, and all 
because of the confusion of names? The English reader 
will call a momentary halt to think that the Robin he knows 
builds in holes in banks, and uses moss and hair, without 
any mud in the construction of its nest, when he reads our 
American poet’s lines : 
“Thet’s robin-redbreast’s almanick; he knows 
That arter this ther’ ’s only blossom-snows, 
So, choosin’ out a handy crotch an’ spouse 
He goes to plasterin’ his adobe house.” 
And, on the other hand, in the Ingoldsby Legends we 
meet the lines: 
“ Slower and slower, he limped on before, 
Till they came to the back of the belfry door, 
When the first thing they saw, midst the sticks and the straw, 
Was the ring in the nest of that little Jackdaw.” 
And we remember that the so-called “Jackdaw” of the 
Gulf States (Quéscalus major) does not nest in belfry towers, 
and if he has any of the thieving proclivities for which the 
European Jackdaw (Corvus monedula) is famous, I have 
never heard of them. 
Of all our American poets Lowell has undoubtedly made 
the most, and the best, use of birds. And it is probably 
