ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE NIGHTINGALE. 41 



avoided, whkh may be situate witiiin the general boundaries of its 

 summer distribution. 



It is 7hot, as some have supposed^ confined to the localities where 

 the cowslip grows. — ^It has indeed been suggested, that the Night- 

 ingale may possibly not be found in any part but where €owslip8 

 grow plentifully ; and, with respect to Devonshire and Cornwall, 

 this coincidence is, as Montagu observes, just, but fails in certain 

 localities near London, where (as in the extensive woods of Norwood 

 and Dulwich) this bird h extremely plentiful, but the cowslip is not 

 found ; while, on the other hand, in the vicinity of York, where 

 cowslips are, I am told, plentiful in the extreme, the Nightingale 

 never visits ; so that there is evidently no connexion in the matter, 

 which indeed might have been expected, prima facie, the one 

 being a bird of the woods, and the other, properly, a plant of the 

 open meadow. 



Appears to migrate almost due north or south. — There may probably 

 be some suitable districts from which this bird is excluded, on account 

 of the route which leads to them being, perhaps, cut off by a moun- 

 tain or other impediment, while a fertile tract of country, on either 

 side, tends further to make them diverge from a direct course. 

 Others, as the wooded vallies of Devonshire, Wales, Ireland, and 

 the greater part of Scotland, are unquestionably situate beyond 

 their regular line of migration : for I am prepared to shew (at 

 least so far as all the data I have been able to collect will bear me 

 out) that, in its migrative flights, the Nightingale hardly deviates 

 from a meridian ; which, being conceded, together with the fact 

 that it everywhere avoids both the rocky and the marshy lands, it 

 will be found that all the seeming anomalies, as yet recorded, dis- 

 played throughout the whole extent of the Nightingale's apparently 

 partial summer range, may be satisfactorily accounted for. We 

 have now only to discover what peculiarity of food excludes it from 

 those sylva-n districts which are situate over the rocks of igneous, or 

 (as some term them) primary, formation. 



Supposed route of most of the summer birds of passage. — The fol- 

 lowing will, I think, appear to be, in all probability, the common 

 route of the Nightingale, and, indeed, of the great majority of the 

 short-winged summer birds of passage which visit the British 

 islands. They would seem, in the first instance, to cross from 

 Africa into Spain, to pass chiefly through the eastern provinces of 

 that kingdom (being kept in this direction by the continuous moun- 

 tain chains, which, for the most part, run north-east and south- 

 west) ; then to penetrate through France, having surmounted some 



