48 THE BIRDS OF YORKSHIRE. 



1766, where he tells iis "it is not found in North Wales, or 

 in any of the English counties north of it, except Yorkshire, 

 where they are met with in great plenty about Doncaster." 

 (" Br. Zool." 1st Ed., 1766, p. 100.) 



Thomas Allis reported as follows in 1844 : — 



Philomela luscinia. — Nightingale — was heard in the immediate 

 suburbs of York last spring ; has been met with at Skelton about five 

 miles north of the city some years ago ; it breeds every year in the wood 

 at Cawood, near York ; near Huddersfield ; at Cinderfield Dyke Wood 

 in Bradley ; a few pairs are met with near Barnsley every year, where, 

 as in some oth£r places, they soon fall a prey to the bird-catchers ; it is 

 occasionally heard near Sheffield ; it occurs at Walton Hall and Bram- 

 ham Park ; and near Doncaster is common in Edlington and other 

 woods. 



The Nightingale as a Yorkshire bird has peculiar attrac- 

 tions. To the ornithologist it possesses special interest, since 

 it attains in the county the northernmost limit of its British 

 range ; while to the public generally quite a halo of romance 

 surrounds the bird, probably because to many localities its 

 visits are like those of the proverbial angels, few and far 

 between. 



In the closing years of the eighteenth century, and in the 

 earlier decades of the one just passed away (the nineteenth), 

 Doncaster was regarded by the recognised writers on British 

 ornithology as the most northern locality visited in England. 

 In 1844, Thomas Allis, in his oft alluded-to report, stated 

 that it occurred with some regularity much further north, 

 and informed the naturalists of his day that it had been 

 heard in the suburbs of York in the spring of that year, and 

 that it had been met with at Skelton, about five miles north 

 of that city — ^a statement that has been reproduced in almost 

 every book treating on British birds down to the present 

 time. 



In 1881, when Mr. W. Eagle Clarke came to investigate 

 the dates and make further inquiries regarding the haunts of 

 this species for the bird portion of Mr. Roebuck's and his 

 joint work on the Yorkshire Vertebrata, he found that there 

 was evidence of its occurrence and breeding in localities 



