236 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



throat, that it might make mankind to think that 

 miracles are not ceased." 



The subject of the nightingale's superiority as a 

 singer does not, however, now concern us so much 

 as its distribution in England, and its return each year 

 to the same spot. To this small isolated thicket, let 

 us say, the very bird known here in past years, now 

 away perhaps in Abyssinia, will be here again about 

 April 8 — alone, for he will not brook the presence of 

 another of one of his species in his small dominion, 

 and the female with which he will mate will not ap- 

 pear until about a week or ten days later. 



How natural, then, for the listener to its song to 

 imagine it the same bird he has heard at the same 

 place in previous years ! Even the oldest rustic, whose 

 life has been passed in the neighbourhood, who as a 

 small boy robbed the five olive-coloured eggs every 

 season to make a *' necklace " of them with other 

 coloured eggs as an ornament for the cottage parlour ; 

 whose sons took them in their childhood for the same 

 purpose, and whose grandchildren perhaps rob them 

 now — even he will think the bird he will listen to by-^ 

 and-by the same nightingale of all these years. But 

 this notion is, no doubt, strongest in those parts of the 

 country where the bird is more thinly distributed. 

 Here, on the borders of Surrey and Hampshire, we 

 are in the very heart of the nightingale country, and 

 in these localities where two birds are frequently heard 

 singing against each other and are sometimes seen 

 fighting, it might be supposed that when the bird 



