BLACKBIRDS, NIGHTINGALES, ETC. 319 



singing, or silent. In natural history books, after we 

 have been solemnly told that the male alone sings, 

 that his song constitutes his courtship, and that, there- 

 fore, both the " she " and the " melancholy " of poets 

 are incorrect, we are generally presented with a gaunt, 

 scraggy-looking creature, having a woe-begone gaze 

 which is fixed upon the moon, towards which its neck 

 and whole body seem drawn out, as by some attractive 

 force. This is the nightingale of convention, but 

 when I have seen it, it has always looked the pleas- 

 ingly plump, cheerful, little, brisk, active body that it 

 really is, and when it sang it was without any " pose," 

 in a hunched-up, careless-looking attitude, which had 

 almost a feathered podginess about it. The legs were 

 bent, the feathers of the ventral surface touching, or 

 almost touching, the twig of perch, the head inclining 

 forward at an easy angle — a cosy, homely, happy, con- 

 tented appearance. I have watched one singing thus 

 for some time. Not once did he rear himself up, so 

 as to become long, thin, and tubey — tubby he was 

 rather, and had not the faintest resemblance to a 

 horrible, man-made, first-prize-for-deformity canary 

 bird. Just in the same way, too, he will often sing on 

 the ground, looking as homely and rotund as can be. 

 True it is, as the natural history books tell us, that 

 no one familiar with the bird and its habits would 

 think of calling it or its song melancholy ; therefore 

 (as these never add), remembering Milton's famous 

 line, let us be thankful that he as well as some other 

 poets were not familiar with it. There has long 

 been a nightingale of poetry and literature, grown 

 out of its own song but having little to do with the 

 real bird, which no one except strict scientists — and 



