372 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



He mentions other reptiles, but they are fabulous, with the 

 exception of the Lizard — the bright southern creature, not the 

 dull brown reptile of our heath-lands. He speaks of it as 

 darting from hedge to hedge in the blaze of the summer sun like 

 a flash of lightning (Inf. xxv, 79) — 



" Come il ramarro sotto la gran ferse, 

 Ne' di canicular cangiando sepe, 

 Folgore par, se la via attraversa." 



And now I come to birds ; and it is here that the poet is at 

 his best. One almost hesitates to deal with them, for Dean 

 Church has already touched upon sundry of the poet's similes 

 with regard to them ; but I will venture to go on, for there is 

 still something to be said, even though I must go over part of 

 the ground which he has covered. The words he uses for birds 

 are derived from "avica," or its diminutive "augello," " uccello," 

 and "oca." The latter is interesting. It properly means a bird, 

 but in modern Italian is only used for goose. I have come across 

 an analogous case in Norway, where in a certain district they 

 employ the word " om " — which merely means fowl — to the 

 Shoveler. " Oca " only occurs once in the poem, and there merely 

 as a crest on the pouch of one of the usurers (Inf. xvii. 63) ; on 

 a red ground was blazoned "un oca bianca piu che burro," which 

 would seem to refer to the goose. 



As throughout the poem Dante has to allude to masses of 

 souls floating in the air, it is only natural that be should 

 frequently compare them to birds — for instance (Inf. v. 40), the 

 pack of Starlings. The migratory birds that he had watched 

 going south in autumn and north in spring furnished him with 

 many suitable comparisons. Of these he mostly chose the 

 Stork {Ciconia alba) and Crane {Grus communis), to either which 

 he sometimes alludes distinctly, sometimes leaves the reader to 

 guess to which he is referring. He tells us that of the spirits 

 frozen into the ice (Inf. xxxii. 36), that their teeth chatter, and 

 make a noise like Storks ; that quaint incessant noise which is 

 so well represented by Hauff 's " Herr Klapperschnabel." He 

 sketches for us the Stork standing up in its nest after feeding its 

 young (Par. xix. 92), or draws a picture of the little Stork trying 

 to leave its nest (Purg. xxv. 10). Then we have allusions to 



