316 A HISTORY OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 



asserted to the contrary, the Nightingale is a frequent diurnal vocalist, insomuch 

 that to one that may be heard singing during the night, at least a dozen may be 

 remarked in the same locality by day, in places where they are numerous. They 

 sing more frequently at midnight than in the evening ; for at about eight or nine 

 o'clock not a single Nightingale will perhaps be heard, when', an hour or two 

 later, the woods resound with their music. 



The surpassing song of the Nightingale is totally unlike that of every other 

 British bird ; and its characteristic trait is the brilliancy of its execution, the 

 articulate manner in which it repeats the most inimitable passages, often with 

 inconceivable rapidity. It is a bird 



" That crowds and hurries and precipitates 

 With fast thick warble his delicious notes, 

 As ever fearful that an April night 

 Would be too short for him to utter forth 

 His love chaunt, and disburthen his full soul 

 Of all its music * * * 



* * * Far and near 

 To wood and thicket over the wide grove 

 They answer and provoke each others songs,* 

 With skirmish and capricious passagings, 

 And murmurs musical, and sweet 'jug, jug,' 

 And one low piping sound more sweet than all, 

 Stirring the air with such an harmony, 

 That should you close your eyes you might almost 



Forget it was not day." 



Coleridge. 



But the Bard of Avon, availing himself of the acknowledged licence of a poet, 



affirms that 



" The Nightingale, if she should sing by day, 

 When every Goose is cackling, would be thought 

 No better a musician than the Wren." 



And the Scottish ornithologist of America, Alexander Wilson, seizes on this 

 deprecatory passage in order to extol the Mocking-bird at the Nightingale's 

 expense. It is in the day-time, however, according to my judgment, that the 

 Nightingale is heard to the most advantage. He is the loudest songster of the 

 wood, and one of which the notes, at once, arrest the attention over every other. 

 That singular " low piping sound more sweet than all" takes a stranger to its song 

 quite by surprise ; he wonders what he hears ; and the rapidly-delivered passage 

 that follows perhaps first apprises him that the sound proceeded from a bird. 

 Slow, plaintive, rising in crescendo, dwelt on till the listener pauses in astonish- 

 ment,— -again repeated in another key, even a third time,— -how very different is this 



* A conspicuous habit, in which this bird further resembles the Robin. 



