While Thomson was not the first poet to speak of the odor of the bean-flower, his words show a keen appreciation of that perfume, and certainly the “smell of dairy” was a country odor first poetically noticed by him. His sensitiveness to odors is not especially marked, yet it is safe to say that he was in this respect more observant than his immediate predecessors or contemporaries. In reading the poetry of Nature after Dryden in historical sequence, there is, in coming to “The Seasons,” a sudden sense of freedom and elation, a sense of having at last come upon a poet who writes freely and spontaneously from a large personal experience, whose facts press in upon him even too abundantly. He knows many kinds of Nature and under varying aspects. His garden picture, though somewhat too much in the floral catalogue style, shows how well he knew the cultivated flowers he described, and he speaks with no less loving minuteness of furze, the thorny brake, the purple heather, dewy cowslips, white hawthorn, and lilies of the vale. It is a pleasure to see how much he knew about birds. He describes their habits with remarkable accuracy and minuteness. He shows their tender arts in courtship,[277] their skill in nest-building,[278] and the “pious frauds” whereby they lure away the would-be trespasser.[279] In no poetry between Marvell and Thomson do we find birds so fully described, and Marvell has nothing so charming and sympathetic as Thomson’s winter redbreast.[280] Thomson’s scope is also wider in that he knew the birds of the seashore[281] as well as those of wood and meadow. Equally close attention is given to the various domestic fowl. The peacock had flaunted his painted tail through poetry for a hundred years, and is now for the first time outranked as an object of interested observation by the hen, the duck, and the turkey.[282] The frequent descriptions of domestic animals, especially the sheep,[283] the horse,[284] and the ox,[285] also show minute knowledge such as could not have been gained from books. It is, moreover, a significant fact that through these numerous and varied studies there runs a genuine love for animals. Thomson was, at least in poetic theory, a vegetarian, and he vigorously denounced the killing of animals for food as conduct worthy only of wild beasts.[286] His poetical invectives against hunting are as vigorous as Cowper’s.[287] He objects to caging birds,[288] and his indignation waxes high over the bees “robb’d and murder’d” by man’s tyranny.[289] The only unoffending animal that escapes Thomson’s wide sympathy is the fish.[290] The skill with which the monarch of the brook is lured from his dark haunt and at last “gaily” dragged to land is described with a gusto in curious contrast to the pity lavished on the tortured worm that may have served for bait.[291]