OUR BRITISH SONG BIRDS. 67 
given place to five tiny, hungry Nightingales, his voice 
seems to have utterly left him, and he remains mute and 
silent to the end of his visit. Strange to say, the latest 
date on which I have ever heard him—for the Nightingale 
sings but for a very short period each year—was in the 
daytime, and at mid-day too, on June 21st, 1887, the day 
of the Queen’s Jubilee. I remember the circumstance well. 
The spot was just such a one as the Nightingale loves to 
haunt—a little coppice, with an undergrowth of briars and 
brambles, abutting upon the reedy banks of one of our 
Midland Canals, a spot where the soft insect prey and 
tender grubs on which he chiefly feeds would easily be 
found. The morning had been beautifully warm, and now 
at noon, a friend and myself were resting for awhile upon 
the opposite bank, lazily watching the troops of dragon-flies 
hawking for prey above the water or settling upon the 
floating leaves. The whirligigs took up their mazy dance, 
their shining backs gleaming like polished steel in the bright 
sunlight. The water measurer (aptly named) scudded along 
the surface on those long legs of his, and in and out among 
the reeds the tiny limnobates glided on, attenuated, needle- 
shaped, the very semblance of some insect-ghost. Suddenly, 
from a tree directly before us, the notes of philomel rang 
out—‘‘ Jug, jug, jug-aree ”’—then came a pause, a croak, as 
if his voice had broken, and all was over, for the effort 
seemed quite too much for him. Although we awaited 
long, hoping he would re-commence, we were disappointed, 
for we never heard him again. When in full song there is 
no bird in our woods which can compare with the night- 
ingale in richness and depth of voice. Ardent and eloquent, 
his song throbs with passion, and when heard in the quiet 
of a moonlight night, there runs through it, at least so it 
always seems to me, a strain of such exquisite melancholy, 
that the heart is filled with sadness even whilst the ear is 
charmed with the beauty of its utterance. On the outskirts 
