196 BLYTH ON THE NIGHTINGALE. 



which he described, or at least, that he had never examined it. Be- 

 sides, there is no work upon birds, to which the observation I have just 

 made cannot be applied. Of what use is it, indeed, in each new 

 ornithology, to notice a number of species so superficially described, 

 either by travellers or the ancients, that it is doubtful even whether 

 such birds ever existed. I think it is better to describe with the ut- 

 most accuracy, a species which has been seen, and of whose existence 

 no doubt is entertained, than to dispute upon the analogy of another 

 which has been described some centuries ago ; and certainly the more 

 indecisive we are about the species to which we attribute a. described 

 individual, the more mischief will result from that description. Again, 

 when I open a book for my instruction, and see a bird that is well 

 known, as for example the baldbuzzard, to which the foot of a bird of 

 prey and of a duck have been assigned ; and when another tells me, 

 that such is impossible, since he knows that water-fowls exist which 

 have their feet half-webbed and half-cleft ; whilst another pretends, in 

 reference to the same bird, that the male and female parents destroy 

 such of their young ones as cannot support the rays of the sun ; and 

 others again, that baldbuzzards are the offspring of eagles of different 

 species, which have coupled together, and that these baldbuzzards again 

 produce small vultures^ which, in their turn, generate large vultures, 

 &c., &c., I say, that we must never open those books for our instruc- 

 tion, and that their authors were nothing less than ornithologists, and 

 certainly not observers. We cannot, then, place confidence in their 

 writings as naturalists. Buffon, who combated these absurdities, fell 

 moreover into them, on the subject of the Urubu and stront-vogel of the 

 Cape, which have been described by Kolben. I invite the reader to 

 peruse from beginning to end, Buffon's article on the Urubu, ouroua, 

 oura, or merchant ; he will there see the utmost mass of absurdities 

 in comparison that it is possible to compile. 



ON THE NIGHTINGALE. 



BY EDWARD BLYTH. 



AT the head of the British warblers (Sylviana) is usually placed the 

 nightingale, (Curruca Luscinia of recent authors), a bird however differ- 

 ing in many respects from the other species which have been classed with 

 it in Curruca, and which, as I shall hereinafter endeavour to show, 



