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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 belfr}' 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 {Qniscalus major) does not nest in belfry towers, 

 and if he has any of the thieving proclivities for which the 

 European Jackdaw {Corvus vio?iedula) 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 



