316 SYLVIID.E. 



though once, and once only, Montagu, on this point an un- 

 erring witness, heard it singing on the 4th of May, 1806, near 

 Kingshridge in Soutli Devon, and it is said to have been heard 

 at Teignmouth as well as in the north of the same county, at 

 Barnstaple. But even in the east of Devon it is local and 

 rare, as it also is in the north of Somerset, though plentiful 

 in other parts of the latter. Crossing the Bristol Channel 

 it is said to be not uncommon at times near Cowbridge in 

 Glamorganshire — the information to this effect (confirmed 

 by an example of the bird, shot in May, 1855, near the 

 Perthkerry Woods in that locality) having been kindly com- 

 municated by Mr. Robert Boreter of Llandough Castle, and 

 announced in the last edition of the present work. Dr. 

 Bree states (Zool. p. 1211) that it is found plentifully on 

 the banks of the Wye, near Tintern ; and thence there is 

 more or less good evidence of its occui'rence in Herefordshire, 

 Salop, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, and in Yorkshire to about 

 five miles north of its chief city, but, as Mr. Thomas Allis 

 states, not farther. Along the line thus sketched out and im- 

 mediately to the east and south of it, the appearance of the 

 Nightingale, even if regular, is in most cases rare, and the 

 bird local ; but further away from the boundary it occurs 

 yearly with great regularity in every county and in some 

 places is very numerous.* Mr. More states that it is " thought 

 to have once bred near Sunderland," and it is said to have 

 been once heard in Westmoreland and also, in the summer 

 of 1808, near Carlisle ; but these assertions must be looked 

 upon with great suspicion, particularly the last, which rests 

 on anonymous authority only. Still more open to doubt are 

 the statements of the Nightingale's occurrence in Scotland, 

 such as Mr. Duncan's (not on his own evidence be it re- 

 marked), published by Macgillivray (Brit. Birds, ii. p. 334), 



* Walcott, ia his ' Synopsis of British Birds ' (ii. p. 228) says that the Nightin- 

 gale " has been observed to be met with only where the Cowslip grows kindly," 

 and the assertion receives a partial approval from Montagu ; but v hether the 

 statement be true or false its converse certainly cannot be maintained, for Mr- 

 Watson, in his ' Cybele Britannica,' gives the cowslip {Primula verts) as found in 

 all the " provinces " into which he divides Great Britain as far north as Caithness 

 and Shetland, where we know that the Nightingale does not occur. 



