word to
describe their behaviour, no word could be better than _goistering_, and
we prefer _goister_ to _gauster_. Its likeness to _boisterous_ will
assist it, and we guess that it will be accepted. In the little glossary
at the end of the book _goistering_ is explained as _guffawing_. That
word is not so descriptive of the jackdaw, since it suggests 'coarse
bursts of laughter', and the coarseness is absent from the fussy
vulgarity and mere needless jabber of the daw.

3. 'A dor flew by with crackling cry'. (7)

This to the ear is

'A daw flew by with crackling cry';

and though our poet's glossary tells us that dor = dor-hawk or nightjar,
it really is not so. A dor is a beetle so called from its making a
_dorring_ noise, and the name, like _churr_ and _burr_, is better with
its double R and trill. _Dor-hawk_ may be a name for the _nightjar_, but
properly _dorr_ is not; and if it were, it would be forbidden by _daw_
so long as it neglected its trill. Note also the misfortune that four
lines below we read

'The pigeons flaunted round his door',

where the full correct pronunciation of _door_ (d[open o][schwa]) will
not quite protect it. The whole line quoted from p. 7 is obscure,
because a nightjar would never be recognized by the description of a
bird that utters a crackling cry when flying. That it then makes a sound
different from its distinctive whirring note is recorded. T.A. Coward
writes 'when on the wing it has a soft call co-ic, and a sharper and
repeated alarm quik, quik, quik.' It is doubtful whether _crackling_ can
be accepted.

4. 'The grumping miller picked his way'. (8)

#Grumping# is a good word, which appears from the dictionaries to
be a common-speech term that is picking its way into literature.

5. 'The golden nobs and pippens swell'. (12)

#nob# is _knob_. Golden-nob is 'a variety of apple'; see _E.D.D._:
and as a special name, which the passage implies, it should be hyphened.

6. 'where the pollards frown,
Notched, dumb, surly images of pain'. (13)

#Notched.# This word well describes the appearance of old pollard
willows after they have been cropped; but its full propriety may escape
notice. A very early use of the verb _to notch_ was to cut or crop the
hair roughly, and _notched_ was so used. The Oxford Dictionary quotes
Lamb, 'a notched and cropt s