form, their unrivalled power and speed, some of these deserved appreciative reference, instead of the stale old peacock, already plucked bald, and the still staler turtle

So pressed for similes of beauty are the poets that they have all of them to turn again and again to the peacock's tail, the turtle's neck, and the swan's breast,-to one or other they invariably go,-and very seldom think, apparently, of the myriads of lovely things that might brighten and beautify their verse, if they would only let their minds travel beyond "the tame villatic fowl" of their homesteads.

Now, why is the poets' range so unnecessarily and injuriously limited? In the case of the earliest poets the contemporary ignorance of zoology is sufficient explanation; but for the rest, the same explanation cannot be accepted, unless we are to believe that poets are permitted to ignore what the prose writers of their own day knew well, which is irrational. It may of course be argued that the poets did not need more birds than they used, that they had enough birds, that they used only as many as they wanted, and so forth; but unless poetry differs from prose in some essential manner not yet revealed, it is absurd to suppose that a choice of beauties would not have been resorted to, that monotony and imitation would not have been avoided, that a world of exquisite morals and illustrations would not have been utilised, had they been to hand. What craftsman, working on a thing of beauty, would not use beautiful materials, if heaped up round him, in preference to second-hand odds and ends, much the worse for wear and tear? Indeed, to accept any other explanation is to accuse the poets of something worse than mere ignorance.

Moreover, from internal evidence, it is easy enough to show that, as a matter of fact, the poets were not satisfied with their repertory of fowls. Sometimes they try to compass variety by using different names for the same bird, for

we find them singing mysteriously (to modern ears) of "gleads," "puttocks," "ernes," "tiercels," and so forth, when they had used the more familiar names sufficiently often. Or they make up new birds for themselves, like Spenser's "shriks," Milton's night-ravens, Shelley's deathbirds, or Savage's night crows; or they go boldly into the bird-land of fable, and eke out their stock with such "fearful wild-fowl" as the simurg and roc, gryphon and phoenix, popinjay, heydegre, martlet, and allerion.

Further evidence might, if needed, be found in the fact that where the poets are really at home with their birds they are careful to show it. Thus the hawks of sport are all nicely specified by their technical distinctions, and British game-birds are enumerated without a single omission. The "dove" is also the wood-dove, wood-pigeon, ring-dove, stock-dove, turtle-dove, and carrier-pigeon, while the barn-door fowl is accurately detailed into Chanticleer and Partlet, cock and hen, cockerel, capon, pullet, and chicken, eight birds made out of two, or out of one. It is fairly evident, therefore, that the very limited range of the poets was not altogether optional with them; for not only did they make the very most of the few birds they were sure of, but they invented others to increase the number. So it becomes difficult, except under the theory that they were ignorant of Nature, to explain their reti cence. But in the case of many of the poets, their ignorance, as I have said, was a misfortune, and not a fault, for, however disastrous it may have been, as depriving their poems of much beauty, variety, and power that they might otherwise have possessed, the door to the natural world was, in their day, only just ajar.

I will not, therefore, press this charge against the bards. Our loss was also their misfortune. But my second charge, that of injustice to the bird-world, is far more serious. It also arises from ignorance, but ignorance of

another degree. We can hardly quarrel with a poet for not writing about birds which he did not know of. But we can quarrel with him for not knowing about the birds which he did write of. And it is this second ignorance, therefore, this inner coil, that I complain of, and resent. For the larger offence, the neglect of the whole world's ornithology, we can find palliation, or, at any rate, we can condone it with regret. But for the smaller, more concentrated neglect, I feel but little tenderness. The poets have wasted some two thousand exotic birds,-let that pass. But I feel it a duty to notice, in some detail, their unfair treatment of their seventy-six "British species."

The complete list stands as follows: Albatross, blackbird, bullfinch, bittern, blackcock, buzzard, booby, cormorant, crane, cock, corn-crake, chaffinch, cuckoo, crow, chough, coot, curlew, duck, eagle, field-fare, fulmar, gull, goldfinch, goose, gannet, greenfinch, grouse, goshawk, heron, hobby, jackdaw, jay, kingfisher, kite, linnet, loon, merlin, magpie, martin, moor-hen, nightingale, night-jar, noddy, . owls, ousel, osprey, peacock, plover, partridge, pheasant, ptarmigan, quail, raven, ring-dove, rook, robin, swan, swallow, skylark, sparrow, snipe, stone-chat, sand-lark, stockdove, starling, sparrow-hawk, swift, thrush, turtle dove, teal, white-throat, wren, woodpecker, woodcock, woodlark, wildduck-seventy-six in all.

Now, one of the first points to attract attention in this curious list is the presence of only seven sea-birds. What a collection to represent the feathered nations of the ocean and the sea-vexed coasts and cliffs! The albatross, it is true, is used with notable effect in the "Ancient Mariner," but what shall we say of the rest?

The unhappy cormorant, perhaps because Milton began by saying the devil resembled it, is selected by Churchill as

1 Complete, that is, out of the eighty poets I have taken for my text.

the very abomination of desolation ("Let cormorants in churches make their nests"), and is invariably misrepresented and maligned by the other poets as "obscene," "greedy," and "ill-omened," that inhabits caves which "the dun seals" share with it. The gannet is once mentioned by Scott as "flying," and the fulmar once by Mallet as "screaming," while the loon, the booby, the noddy, and the "soland-goose" are each once referred to, to point a pleasantry. Such are the ocean-birds of the poets, and, except where "sea-mews" and "sea-pies" are thrown in, and sometimes very finely, as adjuncts of sea scenery, not another bird is mentioned. Not a word for the frigatebird-though it does sleep on the wing-and barely a poem for the stormy petrel, its name itself a tragedy! Is there not a real and grievous injustice done here to the beautiful and noble birds that add grace and dignity even to the Sea itself?

Unjust, also, we must consider the treatment of the birds of prey. If the poets were contemptuous to the "fishers of the sea," they are prejudiced against "the pirates of the sky."

These are represented in Britain, according to the bards, by the eagle, hawk, falcon, buzzard, goshawk, hobby, merlin, osprey, sparrow-hawk, kite. The eagle is imperial both in Nature and out of it, and the poets have indeed done splendid justice to this splendid bird, but unfairly, and at the expense of others. Thus, that which is grand in eagles is wicked in hawks. The latter are always "rending" something, or "ravening," or "gorged," or "bloudy." Once and again, by accident as it were, and for no obvious purpose, the "gentle spar-hawk," "the soaring hobby," and "the merlin are introduced. Spenser, a naturalist, knew the goshawk, and Burns sees it "driving on the wheeling. hare." But the buzzard is hardly allowed to be worth calling a bird, and is used to express the ne plus ultra of

unworthiness among fowls; the osprey is treated as of "illomen," and the constant companion of "obscene" birds; while the kite is held in general abomination, is regarded only as a carrion-bird, a scavenger, and as eating human flesh. In the last character, Macaulay delights in "the carrion kite." He gives Valerius to "the kite," the Lord of Norba to "the Porcean kites," fair-haired armies to "the kites," and

"The kites know well the long stern swell

That bids the Romans close."

When used in sport, both hawks and falcons are abundantly referred to as "haggards," "gentles," "tiercelets," "tarsels," and so forth-and many fine results obtained, with the adventitious help of hernshaws and cranes, lures, bells, hoods, jesses, and all the other paraphernalia of falconry. We have them presented to us in every light, either when "they soar to seize, or, stooping, strike their prey;" or when, "humble, they sit upon the wrists of common men." Somerville, especially, when he sings

"the valiant falcon's

Aerial fights, where no confederate brute
Joins in the bloody fray, but bird with bird
Jousts in mid-air,"

is fired with a worthy admiration of "the lordly fowl" of Spenser, the Marmion among the feathered. But through all this praise we hear the sad jingling of the trained bird's bells. In Nature, as apart from falconry, this splendid family, the Falconidæ, has no more than the meagre recognition I have already noted. The peregrine, the earl among the birds; the kestrel, so beautiful and so brave; or the merlin, "the lady's hawk," conspicuous even among falcons for its grace, its daring, and its astonishing velocity, might each of them adorn many a line which other fowls now encumber.