NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 131 



NOTE V. 



Homer, who has been closely imitated by all the celebrated epic poets, has thus de- 

 scribed the migration of cranes : 



So when inclement winters vex the plain 

 With piercing frost, or thick descending rain ; 

 To warmer seas the cranes embodied fly, 

 With noise and order, through the midway sky : 

 To pigmy nations wounds and death they bring, 

 And all the war descends upon the wing. 



Pope's Translation. 



Virgil thus describes the same subject : 



Quales sub nubibus atris, 



Strymoniffi dant signa grues, atque sethera trananf 

 Cum sonitu, fugiuntque notos clamore secundo. 



i£*EiD,Lib. 10. 



On comparing these descriptions, of the four greatest epic poets who have adorned the 

 world, can there be any hesitation in awarding the palm of superiority to Milton ? 



The anus canadensis, or wild goose, when formed into a phalanx for migration, appears 

 in the shape of a wedge. 



Although the ancients were so much puzzled about the migration of birds, that they 

 supposed it extended to the moon, yet it is now no longer a mystery. The departure of 

 the swallow has been a subject of more speculation and fable than that of any other 

 bird. The estimable Bartram told Dr. Barton, that he has seen, in the autumn, large 

 flocks of all our four species of swallows, on their return southward from Pennsylvania, 

 through Carolina, Florida, &c. and in the spring on their return to the northward again. 

 Fragments of the Natural History, #c. 



Catesby supposes, that birds of passage, particularly swallows, pass to the same latitude 

 in the southern hemisphere, as the northern latitude from whence they came ; that they 

 retire, for instance, from Carolina to Brazil, and particularly, that our chimney swallow 



