BLACKBIRDS, NIGHTINGALES, ETC. 317 



occurred to me that this has been developed as a 

 guiding star for one to follow another by, just as the 

 white tail of the rabbit is supposed to have been. I 

 have often watched two pursuing each other through 

 the dim leafiness, each uttering a variant of the deep, 

 croaking note of which I have spoken, and which 

 answers to the call, chirp, or twitter amongst other 

 birds. At such times the ruddy star or streak has 

 always, as I say, been most conspicuous. Indepen- 

 dently of this, the bird's general colouring is a pleas- 

 ing olive brown which, according to position and 

 circumstances, has a more or less glossy appearance, 

 the tail having received the finest polish. By virtue 

 of all this, I feel sure that, to anyone who had watched 

 and waited for her, the nightingale would come rather 

 as a conspicuous than a dull-looking bird, at least 

 amongst our smaller British birds. Tits and chaf- 

 finches, as it seems to me, flash less as they flit 

 through the trees. Therefore, when I read the eternal 

 remarks about its dull colouring, which — and this is 

 the bane of natural history — one writer hands down 

 from the mouth of another through the generations, 

 I say to myself that each and all of them have, either, 

 never called upon the bird and stayed an hour or two, 

 or else that they have got out of the habit — which 

 may be also a trouble — of seeing anything other than 

 as " it is written." So far from the nightingale being 

 specially like a plain-bound book in which lovely 

 songs are contained, to me it seems to offer an 

 example of a bird distinguished both by its musical 

 powers and — to a much lesser extent, certainly, but 

 still not insignificantly — by its colour also. I am 

 thinking of its tail, and particularly of that ruddy 



