THE NIGHTINGALE. Oi 



even till the stock and ring doves have, by their soft mu^ 

 mnrings, lulled each other to rest, and then he pours forth 

 his fiill tide of melody. 



Listening Philomela deigns 



To let them joy, and purposes, in thought 

 Elate, to make her night excel their day. 



Thomsoh. 



It is a great subject of astonishment that so small a bird 

 should be endowed with such potent lungs. If the evening 

 is calm, it is supposed that its song may be heard above 

 half a mile. This bird, the ornament and charm of the 

 spring and early summer evenings, as it arrives in April, 

 and continues singing till June, disappears on a sudden 

 about September or October, when it leaves England to pass 

 the winter in the North of Africa and Syria. Its visits to 

 England are limited to certain counties, mostly in the 

 south and east; as, though it is plentiful in the neighbourhood 

 of London, and along the south coast in Sussex, Hampshire, 

 and Dorsetshire: it is not found in either Cornwall or 

 Wales. As soon as the young are hatched, the song of the 

 male bird ceases, and he only utters a harsh croak, by way 

 of giving alarm when any one approaches the nest. Night- 

 ingales are sometimes reared up, and doomed to the prison 

 of a cage ; in this state they sing ten months in the year, 

 thougk in their wild life they sing only as many weeks- 

 Bingley says that a ca^ed Nightingale sings much more 

 iweetly than those which we hear abroad in the spring 

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