THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE 233 



instrumental throat, that it might make mankind 

 to think that miracles are not ceased." 



The subject of the nightingale's superiority as a 

 singer does not, however, now concern us so much 

 as its distribution in England, and its return each 

 year to the same spot. To this small isolated thicket, 

 let us say, the very bird known here in past years, 

 now away perhaps in Abyssinia, will be here again 

 about April 8 — alone, for he will not brook the 

 presence of another of one of his species in his 

 small dominion, and the female with which he will 

 mate will not appear until about a week or ten 

 days later. 



How natural, then, for the listener to its song to 

 imagine it the same bird he has heard at the same 

 place in previous years ! Even the oldest rustic, whose 

 life has been passed in the neighbourhood, who as a 

 small boy robbed the five olive-coloured eggs every 

 season to make a "necklace" of them with other 

 coloured eggs as an ornament for the cottage parlour; 

 whose sons took them in their childhood for the same 

 purpose, and whose grandchildren perhaps rob them 

 now — even he will think the bird he will listen to 

 by-and-by the same nightingale of all these years. 

 But this notion is, no doubt, strongest in those parts 

 of the country where the bird is more thinly dis- 

 tributed. Here, on the borders of Surrey and Hamp- 

 shire, we are in the very heart of the nightingale 

 country, and in these localities where two birds are 

 frequently heard singing against each other and are 

 sometimes seen fighting, it might be supposed tha 



