The parsimonious emmet provident
Of future-

Ray, in 1691, gave the earliest refutation of this error. But our chief debt is due to Huber. The ant is known to be almost entirely carnivorous; without skill to build garners, or store them with food. Nor is the winter-magazine necessary for the support of the insect, because the depth of its nest protects it from the weather, and severe frost renders it torpid.

The bird-pictures by Poets are commonly well-coloured. Spenser and Milton give exquisite sketches of the peacock—

fayre peacocks that excel in pride,

And, full of Argus eyes, their tayles dispredden wide.

Th' other whose gay train

Fairy Queen, B. i. c. 4.

Adorns him, colour'd with the florid hue

Of rainbows, and starry eyes—

Paradise Lost, B. vii. 444.

Thomson very happily indicates the peculiarity of the bird's appearance, by saying that it spreads its

For when the peacock's train is raised, the head and neck only are visible; and, therefore, the poetical description of its diffused lustre and beauty is very lively and accurate. Its splendid feathers grow up the back.

Occasionally the faithfulness of Milton is startling, particularly in those slight circumstances of zoology, in which poetical footsteps are most likely to be caught tripping. It will be remembered, that he represents Satan entering the garden under the form of a bird :

up he flew, and on the tree of life Sat like a cormorant, devising death

To them that lived.

HOOTING OF OWLS.

17

Bishop Stanley remarks that the poet could not have clothed the Tempter in a more appropriate shape, as the appearance of the cormorant is unearthly and alarming;-he notices "his slouching form, his wet and vapid wings dangling from his side to catch the breeze, while his weird, haggard, wildly-staring emerald-green eyes, scowl about in all directions." Nor was the pictorial fitness of the form obtained at any expense of zoological accuracy; for, though chiefly found among water scenery, the cormorant often perches on trees. A serrated claw of the middle toe, which distinguishes it from the pelican, enables it to cling to branches.

It has been said, that all poets, ancient and modern, Shakspere alone being excepted, bestow a melancholy epithet upon the owl. Gray's "moping owl does to the moon complain"-Thomson shows "assiduous in her bower the wailing owl"-Shakspere gives the true portrait, when he makes Lennox say, after the murder of Duncan

The obscure bird clamour'd the livelong night;

for the owl sleeps and hisses in the day, and at night hunts and screeches. "Hooting" is not its general mode of expressionnot its vernacular. The mountain-owl flies at night, whooping when perched. A friend of Mr. White, in Hampshire, tried all the owls in his neighbourhood with a pitch-pipe, of the sort used for tuning harpsichords, and found them to hoot in B flat. But taste or capacity varies in the family, for the owls of Selborne range between G flat, F sharp, B flat, and A flat. The inquiring naturalist, who has given fame to that charming village, once heard two owls hooting at each other in different keys-two Arcadians indeed.

Beattie, in four of the most natural lines of English poetry, has indicated the flight and the disposition of the owl, leaving

Ꭰ

on the reader's mind, at the same time, the solemn sentiment of the landscape:

The errors in Thomson's zoology have been remarked, and other examples might be given, as in the description of the

FLIGHT OF THE PIGEON.

19

woodlark singing in copses; because its custom is to warble on the wing-not soaring, but circling round its mate.

For the most part, however, his pencil catches every colour and movement of bird or beast. How happy is the picture of the rock-pigeon:

beneath yon spreading ash,

Hung o'er the steep, whence, borne on liquid wing,

The sounding culver shoots.

The pigeon in full sweep gives a very remarkable sound. But the picturesque word, "shoots," had been already applied to the dove's flight by Dryden, in his musical translation of the lines in Virgil:

At first she flutters; but at length she springs
To smoother flight, and shoots upon her wings.

This imitative harmony was sure to win the ear of Coleridge, from whose poetry many exquisite specimens might be selected. Take the following:

crane:

When the last rook

Beat its straight path along the dusky air
Homewards, I blest it! deeming its black wing,
(Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)

Had crossed the mighty orb's dilated glory,

While thou stood'st gazing; or when all was still,

Flew creeking o'er my head.

The poet tells us that, some months after writing this line, he found Bartram describing the same peculiarity in the Savanna "When these birds move their wings in flight, their strokes are slow, moderate, and regular; and even when at a considerable distance or high above us, we plainly hear the quill feathers; their shafts and webs upon one another creek as the joints or working of a vessel in a tempestuous sea."

Among English poets, Bloomfield and Clare are remarkable