THE IMMORTAL NIGHTINGALE 239 



of Surrey and Hampshire, we are in tlie very heart of 

 the nightingale country, and in these locaHties where two 

 birds are frecjucntly heard singing against each other 

 and are sometimes seen figliting, it might be supposed 

 that when the bird inhabiting a particular copse or 

 thicket comes to an end, another will quickly take the 

 vacant place. The three counties of Hampshire, Surrey, 

 and Kent abound most in nightingales; they are a little 

 less numerous in Sussex and Berkshire; but these five 

 counties (or six if we add Buckinghamshire) undoubt- 

 edly contain more nightingales than all the rest of 

 England together. The bird, coming to us by way of 

 France, travels north, each to his ancestral place, the 

 majority finding their homes in the south of England, 

 on its south-eastern side; the others going north and 

 west are distributed more thinly. On a map coloured 

 red to show the distribution, the counties named above 

 would show the deepest colour over a greater part of 

 the entire area; while north and west there would be 

 a progressive decrease in the depth over the south- 

 western counties, the home counties north of the Thames, 

 the Midlands, East Anglia, and north to Shropshire 

 and South Yorkshire, where it would disappear. And 

 on the west side of England it would finish on the Welsh 

 border and in East Devon. In all of Devonshire west 

 of the valley of the Exe, with Cornwall ; in practically 

 all Wales and Scotland and Ireland, there are no night- 

 ingales. 



It is a singular distribution, a puzzling one ; for why 

 is it that the blackcap, garden warbler, wood-wren, and 



