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The nest where every joy to them was centred.
There rife corruption tainted them so lightly,
The moisture seemed to vanish from their relics
As dew from gossamer, that leaves the network
Spread on the ground and glistening in the sun.
Thus when a breeze the ruffled plumage stirred,
That lay like drifted snow upon the soil,
Their slender skeletons were seen beneath,
So delicately framed and half transparent,
That I have marvelled how a bird so noble
When in his full magnificent attire,
With pinions wider than the king of vultures,
And down elastic thicker than the swans',
Should leave so small a cage of ribs to mark
Where vigorous life had dwelt a hundred years.

-Montgomery: Pelican Island.

PENGUIN.

The heavy penguin, neither fish nor fowl,
With scaly feathers and with finny wings,
Plumped stone-like from the rock into the gulf,
Rebounding upward swift as from a sling,
Through yielding water as through limpid air.

-Montgomery: Pelican Island.

PHEASANT.

Painted pheasant rare.-Bloomfield: Spring.

See! from the brake the whirring pheasant springs,
And mounts exulting on triumphant wings.

Short is his joy; he feels the fiery wound,

Flutters in blood, and, panting, beats the ground.
Ah! what avail his glossy varying dyes,

His purple crest and scarlet-circled eyes,
The vivid green his shining plumes unfold,

His painted wings and breast that flames with gold!

-Pope: Windsor Forest.

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And from the brake
Rush forth the whirring pheasant high in air;
He waves his varied plumes, stretching away
With hasty wing.—Somerville: Field Sports.

The helmets gay with plumage

Torn from the pheasant's wings.

-Macaulay: Prophecy of Capy's.

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Whirr of the pheasant,—Cook: Must I leave thee, Paradise?

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To crown thy open table doth provide

The purpled pheasant with the speckled side;

The painted partridge lies in every field,

And for thy mess is willing to be killed.-Johnson: Forest.

"Pheasant, forsake the country, come to town;

I'll warrant thee a place beneath the crown."

"No, not to roost upon the throne would I

Renounce the woods, the mountains, and the sky."

-Montgomery: Birds.

'Tis not the meat, but 'tis the appetite

Makes eating a delight.

And if I like one dish

More than another, that a pheasant is.-Suckling: Sonnet,

The roosting pheasant's short but frequent crow

Invites to rest.—Bloomfield: Autumn.

While oft unhous'd from beds of ling,

The flushering pheasant took to wing.-Clare: Holywell.

The crowing pheasant in the brakes

Betrays his lair with awkward squalls;

A certain aim the gunner takes,

He clumsy flushers up and falls.-Clare: Autumn.

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And blund'ring pheasant that from covert springs,
His short sleep broke by early trampling feet,
Makes one to startle with his rustling wings,

As through the boughs he seeks more safe retreat.

-Clare: Summer Morning.

PLOVERS.

One of the six "orders" into which naturalists divide the bird-world comprises "the waders," and the first "family" of this order is that of the plover folk. Of these the poets recognise four species-the osyter-catcher and the dotterel, the grey plover and the lapwing.

The oyster-catcher, under its name of "sea-pie," occurs once in Mallet, who takes the liberty of making the bird "warble;" and the dotterel, unless Wordsworth really meant a "sand-lark" when he uses the name (for sand-lark is a provincial name for the dotterel) and says it "chants a joyous song," is only referred to by Drayton, who, after remarking that it makes a dainty dish, goes on to say

that

"Its taking makes more sport as man no more can wish,
For as you creep or coure or lye or stoupe or goe,
So marking you with care, the apish bird doth soe,
And acting everything, doth never mark the net
Till he be in the snare.'

This is pure fancy, however, arising, it may be, from an imaginative observation of those plover attitudes and gestures which are common to these birds, or from a poetical tenderness for local tradition. So that these two birds only live in verse by the mistakes made about them.

The "grey plover" is noted only by Scott and Burns, both of whom make it a bird of melancholy associations—

says one; and

"Deep-toned plovers grey

Wild-whistling o'er the hill."

The lapwing-a name derived, by the way, from its laplapping manner of flight-receives more frequent recognition, and abundantly repays it by the picturesqueness which it invariably gives to the lines in which it flies

"From the shore

The plovers scatter o'er the heath,

And sing their wild notes to the listening waste.”

"The purple moor where the plover cries."

The pretty artifice common to this tribe, and specially conspicuous in the lapwing, of pretending to be disabled so as to tempt enemies away from the nest, finds frequent reference in the poets. Thomson, with that truly awful disregard of nature that occasionally "shags "1 his verse, perpetrates the following:

"Around the head

Of wandering swain the white-winged plover wheels

Her sounding flight, and then directly on

In long excursion skims the level lawn,

To tempt him from her nest."

After this, how beautifully do Shenstone's lines read :—

"The plover fondly tries

To lure the sportsman from her nest,
And fluttering on with anxious cries,
Too plainly shows her tortur'd breast.
Oh, let him, conscious of her care,
Pity her pains and learn to spare!"

The plover is a type of inconstancy, and in Scotland is

1 One of this poet's peculiar poeticisms.

held to be ill-omened; and several Scotch poets refer to it in this sense. Thus Burns-

"Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear;"

Grahame and Leyden are more precise, and give the traditional reason for the bird's ill repute :

"But though the pitying sun withdraws his light,
The lapwing's clamorous hoop attends their flight,
Pursues their steps where'er the wanderers go,
Till the shrill scream betrays them to the foe.
Poor bird where'er the roaming swain intrudes
On thy bleak heaths and desert solitudes
He curses still thy scream, thy clamorous tongue,
And crushes with his foot thy moulting young."

"Ill-omened bird, oft in the times
When monarch owned no sceptre but the sword,

Thou, hovering o'er the panting fugitive
Through dreary moss and moor, hast screaming led
The keen pursuer's eye; oft hast thou hung,
Like a death flag, above the assembled throng
Whose lips hymned praise.

Bird of woe!

Even to the tomb thy victims by thy wing

Were haunted; o'er the bier thy direful cry
Was heard.

Ill-omened bird,

She never will forget, never forget,

Thy dismal soughing wing, and doleful cry."

In the south of Scotland the lapwing is still looked upon as an unlucky bird. Mr. Chatto, in his "Rambles in Northumberland and the Scottish Border," refers to "the persecution to which the Covenanters were exposed in the reign of Charles II. and his bigoted successor;" and, quoting Dr. Leyden, alludes to the tradition that "they were frequently discovered to their pursuers by the flight and