THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE 235 



conditions, and that he is more local; in other words, 

 that we don't know. Some have imagined that he 

 is a delicate feeder and goes only where he can find 

 the food that pleases him; others, that he inhabits 

 where cowslips grow kindly; still others, that he 

 seeks a spot where there is an echo. These are but a 

 few of many fancies and fables about the nightingale. 



Not only is it a singular distribution, but in a way 

 unfortunate, since everyone would like to hear the 

 nightingale — the summer voice which has, over and 

 above the pleasing associations of the swallow and 

 cuckoo and turtle-dove, an intrinsic beauty surpassing 

 that of all other bird voices. As it is, a large majority 

 of the population of these islands never hear it. In 

 districts where it is thinly distributed, as in Somerset 

 and East Devon, there will be perhaps only one 

 nightingale in an entire parish, and the villagers will 

 be proud of it and perhaps boast that they are better 

 off than their neighbours for miles around. 



I was staying late in April at a village near the 

 Severn when one Sunday morning the working man 

 I was lodging with informed me that he had heard of 

 the arrival of their nightingale (there was but one), 

 and together we set out to find it. He led me through 

 a wood and over a hill, then down to a small thicket 

 by a running stream, about two miles from home. 

 This was, he said, the exact spot where he had heard 

 it in previous years; and before we had stood there 

 five minutes, silently listening, we were rewarded by 

 the sound we had come for issuing from a thorny 

 tangle not more than a dozen yards away — a prelusive 



