Jam sibi tum curvis male temperat unda carinis,
Cum medio celeres revolant ex aequore mergi
Clamoremque ferunt ad litora, cumque marinae
In sicco ludunt fulicae, notasque paludes
Deserit atque altam supra volat ardea nubem.[85]
The words mergi and fulicae in these lines have been the subject of much discussion among commentators. That Virgil meant by mergus some particular bird known to himself, there can be little doubt; for he has transferred to the mergus what Aratus (here his original) says of the Heron (ἐρωδιός). And rightly so; for the Heron never goes out to sea to fish, as it needs standing ground and is no swimmer. This mergus stands probably for the Gull in a generic sense; Virgil had doubtless seen them flying to the Campanian coast before a coming storm, and altered Aratus accordingly. The fulica marina is translated by Mr. Blackmore ‘sea-coot,’ which is correct but meaningless, and by Mr. Rhoades[86] ‘cormorant’; but in this case we have no means of determining the species of which the poet was thinking. He used the word fulica, a coot, to help him out in naming a bird which was something like a coot, but a bird of the sea, and one for which he had no word ready, or none that would suit his metre.
Another beautiful passage is to be found in the twelfth book of the Aeneid; it is one in which our poet is evidently describing an everyday sight of an Italian spring and summer, and writing independently of an original:—
Nigra velut magnas domini cum divitis aedes
Pervolat et pennis alta atria lustrat hirundo,
Pabula parva legens, nidisque loquacibus escas;