187 
on further into the country till they found a proper resting place. 
After such a circumstance often repeated, it is evident that the 
nightingales mjght be spead further and further over England, 
becoming more scattered and thinned in numbers, until at length 
there were scarcely any to be found; their habits and the 
required food imposing a limit beyond which they would very 
rarely venture. To a certain extent what I have said may be 
illustrated in a very homely way. Some of us may have 
occasionally seen a shepherd standing at the gate of a rich 
pasture, with his flock pressing behind anxious to get in. On his 
opening the gate the foremost sheep rush in, and immediately 
lower their heads to feed upon the fresh grass, so welcome after 
travelling—perhaps some little distance—along the dusty road. 
Others follow, but have to push their way through the first lot to 
get at the grass that lies beyond, and so on until they have all got 
in and had a bite, the sheep by this time being pretty equally 
scattered over the field. Here the parallel between them and 
the nightingales would end, from the limitation imposed upon the 
sheep by fencing and for other obvious causes. 
To return to the nightingales, let us now take note of the 
counties in which they are more or less frequent. They abound 
in the E. and S.E. counties, which we might call their head- 
quarters. In Kent and Cambridgeshire—the two counties in that 
part of England I am best acquainted with—the copses, hedges 
and plantations, in the early summer, resound with their song 
night and day ; mixed up during the day with that of numerous 
other song birds—some natives, others migrants—the former, 
though much more widely distributed over England than the 
nightingales, still abounding in their greatest numbers where they 
first alighted on our shores. No such concert was ever heard in 
Bath, nor anything approaching to it. It quite realizes the lines 
of Cowper :— 
“Ten thousand warblers cheer the day 
And one the live long night.” 
