From these two classes alone, the sea-fowl and the birds of prey, we might consider the charge of injustice substantiated; but now that all the birds are in court, I may as well call up other witnesses.

Conspicuous, then, in my list as Unpopular Birds are the following: the bittern, crows, the goose, jackdaw, jay, and magpie, owls, and the raven; to which I should add, from foreign climes, the ostrich, peacock, parrots, and vulture. In their treatment of these birds, the poets' utterances are curiously characterised not only by a want of sympathy, but also by an unlooked-for want of originality.

The bittern, one of the most strangely poetical of birds, is found useful only as a synonym for discordance and desolation, and if it had not been for its making strange noises would not probably have been mentioned at all. Scott says it "shrieks" and "booms" and "drums" from the "melancholy marshes;" Thomson, so often absurd, says that, "with bill ingulpht, he shakes the surrounding marsh;" and Burns may be suspected of harbouring the same heresy, for he calls upon the bird to "rair" until "the quagmire reels." But Churchill and Shenstone do it a more conspicuous injustice; for the one, thinking it to be a sea bird, and having read of it as a thing of desolate places, symbolises ruin by making this bird perch on “the sails of commerce," while the other calls it the "the caitiff bittern."

The crows fare even worse. Ever since, in Rome,-

"The cawing crow was to the state

A sure interpreter of fate,"

this bird has been one of ill-omen and unkindly superstition. Sometimes it is mistaken for "the honest rook;" at others for the raven, as when Green says—

"The honourable prophet

Did more than angel couriers greet

The crows that brought him bread and meat,"

and thus, vicariously, arrives at some respect or honour. But as "the crow" it is "the most accomplished of the feathered race" in mischief, a "lurking" (Dyer) and "dastard" (Dryden) bird; the truth being that this sagacious fowl collects others of its kind to hustle the eagle, which all poets consider an unjustifiable affront to "the bird of Jove," denying the crow even the right of self-proBut here, as elsewhere, when a tradition lures. them away from Nature, the poets all follow each other on Butler's lines,

"Is it not ominous in all countries,

When crows or ravens croak from trees?"

and repeat each other as to its "treble-dated" years, its "hoarse" voice and generally uncanny habits.

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"The crows sit on the murrained cattle," says Shelley; and again, "On the lean sheep sit the prophetic crows;" and it is in this light, as a carrion-bird and of evil augury, that the bards, without exception, prefer to view it.

The goose, sacred to at least two great nations of antiquity, the wisest of fowls, the bird of the quill and the gray-goose shafts, is the butt and jest of poets. They even think it discreditable to the Capitol (see Spenser, Addison, and others) to have been saved by such a bird. It is "illformed" and "waddling," "gabbling" and "greedy," the symbol of foolishness and garrulity. The poets could not, apparently, look farther than their own patch of common. The farm-yard gate barred their "eagle vision." But I forget; the wild-goose was known to one poet, at any rate, for he makes vultures chase it.

Jackdaws are, in poetry, only "daws," and for poetical reasons, no doubt, are "idle," "foolish," "wrangling," "of ominous note," and "obscene;" while that deplorable incident of the feather, which might generously have been forgotten long ago, is carefully made the most of. Yet how

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is it that contemporary prose writers perpetually refer to the pleasant chattering of the jackdaws, these retainers of old English houses, the privileged tenants of ancient family seats, turret, tower, belfry, and castle wall? To my own prosaic mind, indeed, the jackdaw is among the birds something like the cedar among trees, as lending an air of ancient repose and long-undisturbed possession to an estate. Its voice strikes on the ear, as we approach some old baronial place or many-spired cathedral, the first note of that reverend calm which possesses us when we actually stand within the hushed precincts of the ivy-muffled walls. So, too, the cooing of doves makes the noon silent, the cry of the corn-crake proclaims the slumber of the summer evening fields, and the sudden hoot of the owl emphasises the stillness of the night.

Nor with regard to the magpie do I confess to more contentment with the poets. For here again, even if we admit it to be "thieving," "chattering," "gossiping," I see no reason for insisting-because it is "the magician magpie" of Churchill, and because country folk believe it "scatters notes of presage "--that it is a disagreeable adjunct to the landscape, and nothing better than

"An impudent, presuming pye,

Malicious, ignorant, and sly."

It is really a wonder that owls, pelted as they have been with bad names, have not before now become the abandoned and wicked fowls that poets declare them to be. A less sober bird would have gone wrong under such undeserved contumely long ago. It is only necessary to give some of the epithets which the bards have slung at the owl"silent," "hoarse," "moody," "grim," "boding," "moping," "complaining," "wailing," "gibbering," "screaming," "shrieking," "ill-faste," "obscene," "ghastly," "dire," "unhallowed"-to be assured of the opinion they had

about poor Nyctemene. But this gradually ascending scale of opprobrium is not by any means the whole of her wrongs. Her personal appearance is discredited, for she is described as "gray" and "wide-staring," with an "uncomely" beak, and given to "blinking" and "goggling." Her association with the night makes night dreadful, for instead of being merely a bird of sleep and innocent darkness, or "the sad bird of night," which, when

"The shades of eve come slowly down, And woods are wrapped in deeper brown, Awakens in her dell,"

the very presence of the owl makes night a time of phantoms and desolation and death and evil deeds. She lives in ruined towers, "lightning-blasted" trees, and "baneful" ivy-bushes. Here, during the day, she sleeps, with frequent interruptions (especially in Scott); and hence, when darkness favours her criminal designs, she issues forth in the bad company of "bats" and "shadows," "sickness," "ghosts," and "night-ravens." She ought to be, but is not, on good terms with the night or the moon, for she "disturbs" and "afflicts" the one, making it "hideous," while, though she "salutes" the other, she does so with impropriety, either with "unseemly" or "derisive shouts," "fearful howlings," or "barbarous noises," and, though making a confidante of Selene, does not hesitate to "mock" her. This "bird of the ivy," therefore, simply as a thing of feathers, a fowl of the air, has much to complain of. But its indignities are multiplied when the poets come to speak of it "poetically." Some of their synonyms are these: "gloom bird," "rude bird of hate," "shrieking harbinger," "foul precursor of the fiend," "augur of the fever's end," "messenger of death," and "companion of infernal hagges!" After this, “deathboding," ," "dirge-singing," "unholy," are merely acidulated compliments. But is it not enough to make a good bird

take to bad ways to be accused of foretelling "the hapless doom" of every impertinent and casual passer-by, when it was really only conversing with its lawful wife; or to speak of it as "affrighting poets' souls with words of woe," when, as a fact, the bird was merely making a remark to a neighbour about her last mouse?

Nor does the raven fare better. Taunted with its conduct towards Noah, robbed of the credit of nourishing Elijah, triumphed over for its disgrace in Olympus, and abused for flying on the standard of the conquering Dane, "the hideous raven with prodigious flight" has little to thank English bards for. They credit it with "glossy plumage," but this is the full extent of their generosity. According to the poets, it is "solitary," "dark and foul," "greedy," "obscene," "a carrion-eater," "not less a bird of omen than of prey." When on the wing it prefers tempests, and when afoot it sings "dirges," perching for choice on "blasted" trees, generally "oaks," which rhyme with "croaks." These are the ordinary "ravens" of the poets. But Milton and Spenser have "the night-raven," and Young "the midnight-raven," which come out in the dark. Nights of horror have always, therefore, raven accompaniments. Ravens fly on funeral wings, and witches use their feathers. Ravens haunt graveyards. Corpses are called "ravens' food." But why go on with the catalogue of the bards' affronts?

To these I have added, as unpopular, from foreign birds, the ostrich, peacock, parrot, and vulture. The first Spenser alludes to as "the greedy ostryge," Prior as "the stupid ostrich," and Cowper as the

"Silliest of the feathered kind,

And formed of God without a parent's mind."

Beyond, therefore, alluding to three popular delusions about this wonderful bird,-its indiscriminate feeding, its burying