428 
NOTES TO THE 
White does not notice that his quotation is not in the least apph- 
cable to an English swallow. What would ' Jeames ' and ' Blazes,' 
or even the groom of the chamber, say if they saw a swallow in 
the entrance hall of Buckingham Palace ? Or, locate our 
swallow (say) at Blenheim. She could but take a long flight 
along the facade of the edifice, and then fly off about a mile, to 
the lakes or ponds. But Virgil is thinking of a Eoman noble- 
man's villa, such as is described (I may say photographed) by 
Pliny the younger, in a celebrated letter, the villa at Como. 
Here you have a number of detached buildings: a dining-room, 
where people lie next the wall comfortably on sofas, while 
the slaves bring them their meat and drink from the open 
door ; then the cubicula, tlien a little shrubbery of myrtles, 
then a cold bath, then some box-trees or planes, then a fish-pond, 
then a portions, a covered gallery somewhat like the cloisters at 
Christ Church, or Magdalen, Oxford, or those at Hampton Court. 
" What swallow ever flew along the jwrticihus vacuis of an 
English house? 
" Horace thus describes the use of the Eoman porticus : — 
^ Nulla decempedis 
Metata privatis opacam 
Porticus excipiebat Arcton.' 
and Juvenal writes : — 
' Balnea sexcentis et phiris porticus, in qua 
Gestetur doniinus, quoties pluit, aime serenum 
Expcctet, spargatque Into jumenta recenti ? 
Hie potius, namque hie mundie nitet ungula mul^e.' 
As to the dining-room : — ■ 
' Parte alia longis Numidarum fulta eolumnis, 
Surgat, et algentem capiat coenatio solem.' 
i,c., let it have a northern aspect. 
" It may be worth your while to point out in your note the 
inapplicability of Virgil's simile to our architecture. ' Lustrat ' 
is as well rendered by ' explores ' as by any other one English 
w^ord. The bird makes its way into every nook, crevice, and 
cranny of the property, flying zig-zag round buildings, shrub- 
beries, tall trees, and then flitting across fish-ponds, open 
baths," &a 
British Migratoey Bikds in Africa. — Writing of the Oases 
in the African Sahara, the Eev. H. B. Tristram states, in the 
llns (1850, p. 278) : — " Here are the winter quarters of many 
of our summer visitants. The chiff-chaff, willow-wren, and 
whitethroat hop on every twig in the gardens shadowed by the 
