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The evil birds of carnage hung and watched,
As ravening heirs watch o'er the miser's couch.
-FAIRFIELD (Griswold).

O God, from vulture dreams my soul defend.-LANIER.

The vulture as a type of reproach and detestation:

Non hercle humanus ergo-
Nam volturio plus humani credo est.

-PLAUT., Mil. Glor. 1043.

Tum autem sunt alii qui te volturium vocant
Hostisne an civis comedis parvi pendere.

-PLAUT., Trin. 101.

Cf. Cic., In Pis. 16, 31; Cat. LXVI, 124; CVI, 4.

An imaginary fresco representing satirically a crow (Tranio), bedeviling two vultures (Theopropides, Simo).

Tr. Viden pictum ubi ludificat una cornix vultorios duos?
Th. Non edepol video. Tr. At ego video: nam inter volturios
duos.

Cornix astat: ea volturios duos vicissim vellicat.

Quaeso huc ad me specta, cornicem ut conspicere possies.

Iam vides? Th. Profecto nullam equidem illic cornicem in-
tuor.

Tr. At tu istoc ad vos optuere, quoniam cornicem nequis
Conspicari, si volturios forte possis contui.

Th. Omnino, ut te apsoluam, nullam pictam conspicio hic

avem.

Tr. Age, iam mitto, ignosco: aetate non quis optuerier.

-PLAUT., Most. 832.

Prof. G. D. Kellog's clever interpretation as an architectural joke (Trans. and Proc. Amer. Phil. Assoc., vol. XLI, p. xliii), postulates, I fear, more ornithology, architecture and Greek than either Plautus himself could have used or his audience follow.

For the Fable of the 'Canis, Thesaurus et Volturius' vid. Phaed. I, 27: The mother-love of the vulture. This myth was later associated with the pelican. Vid. Thompson, op. cit., p. 48. S. v. ONOCROTAlus.

Cf. The vulture, all maternal, typing thus

Earth, mountain crowned, the glory of the sea,
And mother of us all.-BAILEY.

The vulture in proverbial sayings. An unlucky throw of dice:

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She could scream like a vulture or wink like an owl.
-FRENEAU.

NOTE I.

THE SPRING MIGRATION AND SPRING SONG.

To the poets of northern lands the return of the birds in the spring is a nature motive which has been very widely recorded. After the long period of songless autumn and winter, the eagerly awaited songs of the harbingers of spring, associated with the sunshine and joy of the season, naturally aroused the emotions of both folk and poetic consciousness.

The climatic conditions of America are preeminently conducive to such results; consequently it is not surprising to note how fully throughout their pages our own poets have voiced this feeling, for the most part referring to the birds that are equally familiar to every observer. The following citations chosen from scores will indicate the general range and temper of this particular impulse:

In vain the razor-bill'd auk sails far north to Labrador.
-WHITMAN.

And new-come birds each morning sing.-LOWELL.

Two feathered guests from Alabama, two together.
-WHITMAN.

And warmed the pinions of the early bird.-THOREAU.
A tropic bird blown through the north frost wind.-MILLER.
New birds still sing with every spring.-LoWELL.

'Tis the noon of the spring-time, yet never a bird
In the wind-shaken elm or maple is heard.-WHITTIER.
The birds are here, for all the season's late-Lowell.

Whence, oh, whither have they come?
From what rugged, wintry home,

That thus suddenly they bring
These glad messages of spring?
From the hollows of the rocks
Come these sable-coated flocks?
Or, in the forest deep

Have they shivered into sleep,

Where the fir tree or the pine

Their thick boughs intertwine?—LUNT.
(Blackbirds.)

O wild-birds flying from the south,

What saw and heard ye, gazing down?-WHITTIER.

May with her flowers and singing birds, had gone.-BRYANT.

A thousand black birds kept on wing
In walnut tops and it was Spring.-MILLER.

Sparrows far off, and nearer April's bird

Blue-coated flying before from tree to tree.-Emerson.

The winter goes and the summer comes

And the merry blue birds twitter and trill.-ALICE CARY.

And blue birds in the misty spring

Of cloudless skies and summer sing.-BRYANT.

The blue bird chants, from the elm's long branches.
A hymn to welcome the budding year.-BRYANT.

And from the stately elms I hear

The blue bird prophesying Spring.-LONGFELLOW.

A laugh which in the woodland rang,
Bemocking April's gladdest bird.-WHITTIER.

To northern lakes fly wind-borne ducks.-EMERSON.

Soars high with canticle of the blest

The jubilant bobolink.-MACE.

Gladness on wings, the bobolink has come.-Lowell.

And lo! the bobolink-he soars and sings

With all the heart of summer in his wings.-LAMPMAN.

And in flocks the wild goose Wawa,

Flying to the fenlands northward.-LONGFELLOW.

Back into their lakes and marshes

Came the wild gooose and the heron.-LONGFEllow.

Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose
Go honking northward over Tennessee.-MOODY.

I hear the whispering voice of Spring
The thrush's trill, the robin's cry.-HOLMES.

The robin the forerunner of spring.-LONGFellow.

The robins are come again

With tender, melodious note.-MACE.

While the song sparrow warbling from his perch
Tells you that spring is near.-BRYANT.

Already, close by our summer dwelling

The Easter sparrow repeats her song.-BRYANT.
Dusky sparrows in a crowd

Darting, darting northward free.-EMERSON.

At last I saw her watch the swan
Surge toward the north.-MILLER.

The coming of the first robin was a jubilee beyond crowning of monarch or birthday of pope.-MABEL LOOMIS TODD. (Preface, Poems of Emily Dickinson. Second Series.)

Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming. -Jer. VIII, 7.

In Greece and Italy climatic conditions differ widely from our own. The winter is less long and severe. Many northern birds winter there but fewer stay during the summer after spending the winter across the sea. Yet the Greek poets note at least eight species in connection with the northern flight of birds in their spring migration. (Vid. Pischinger, Der Vogelzug bei den Griechischen Dichtern. Kap. I. Der Frühjahrszug.) The swallow holds the chief place of honor as the harbinger of spring. Vid. Hom., Carm. Min. XV, 11; Carm. pop. 41 (Athen. VIII, 360c); Ar., Eq. 419; Simon. 74; Ar., Av. 714; Cratin., Frag. 33; Sapp., Frag. 39; cf. also Thompson, op. cit., p. 188; Pischinger, op. cit., p. 8. The others are as follows: Nightingale, vid. Sappho, Frag. 39; Soph., Elect. 149. For the spring song of the nightingale, int. al. vid. Hom., Od. XIX, 518; Simon., Frag. 73; Ar., Av. 683; Anth. Pal. IX, 363. Cuckoo, vid. Hes., op. 486. Kite, Ar., Av. 713. Wild duck and crane, Carm. Anac. 44. Knoúλos (a seabird, as yet unidentified), Alc. 12 (20). Black bird, Theoc., Epig. IV, 9. These citations collected by Thompson and Pischinger represent about all the Greek poets have left us, but we must remember that we have only very scanty remains from the lyric poets, to whom the poetry of spring and its attendant associations must have been especially dear. The references, in this connection, to the swan, jackdaw and birds of Memnon are rather too vague to be convincing.

In the Latin poets recognition of the spring migration, spring song and nesting is somewhat more widely attested, and the tone is ofttimes surprisingly modern. As with the Greeks, the swallow and nightingale

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