THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE 243 



cock nightingales on the birds' arrival. And this 

 drain had gone on for centuries; at all events we 

 find that as far back as Elizabethan times the night- 

 ingale was eagerly sought after as a cage bird. 

 Willughby, the "Father of British Ornithology," in 

 his account of the bird, gives eight times as much space 

 to the subject of its treatment in a cage as to its 

 habits in a state of nature. 



The cost to a species of caging is probably greater 

 in the case of the nightingale than of any other song- 

 ster. It is well known that if the bird is taken after 

 it has paired — that is, immediately after the appear- 

 ance of the females, a week or ten days later than the 

 males — it will quickly die of grief in captivity. Those 

 taken before the females appear on the scene may live 

 on to the moulting time, which almost always proves 

 fatal. Scarcely one in ten survives the first year 

 of captivity. 



We may congratulate ourselves that it is no longer 

 possible for nightingales to be taken in numbers in 

 this country, thanks to the legislation of the last 

 fifteen years, chiefly to Sir Herbert Maxwell's wise 

 Act empowering the local authorities to give addi- 

 tional protection to wild birds and their eggs in 

 counties and boroughs. It has been a long fight to 

 save our wild birds, and is far from finished yet, 

 seeing that the law is broken every day; that bird- 

 dealers and their supporters the bird-fanciers, and 

 their servants the bird-catchers, who take the chief 

 risk, are in league to defeat the law. Also that very 

 many country magistrates deal tenderly with offenders 



