BIRDS OF THE WAVE AND WOODLAND 19 



mercy that they do. For if all the thrushes that leave us 

 were to come back again, the consequences would be simply 

 disastrous. Suppose all the human emigrants from Great 

 Britain were to come back again ! The population of these 

 islands would be sitting three deep on top of one another. 



No, the thrush is not a micrrant in the sense that the 

 nightingale is or the turtle-dove. By a wise dispensation 

 of Nature the superfluous increment is drafted off annually. 

 But the same number that sing in the garden in March 

 sing every month in the year till March comes round again. 



There is, I confess it, something very pleasing in the 

 thought that a particular turtle-dove, all the time that it was 

 enjoying itself in the palm-gardens by Cairo, or among the 

 arbutus and olives of Athens, should keep in its memory a 

 particular tree in my garden in England, and in spite of all 

 temptations should come straight back to it every summer. 

 For such fidelity I am cordially grateful, and I appreciate 

 the dainty little bird's soft purring in the copse all the better 

 for its pretty compliment of remembrance. 



So with the nightingale, that, out of all the whole world, 

 prefers an old juniper near my house to nest in, and that 

 sits and sings gloriously every night as if in requital of my 

 hospitality. I am proud of the small brown bird's preference 

 for my garden over others, and proud of my neighbour's 

 envy, whose garden the nightingale — " dear angel of the 

 Spring," "the dearling of the somer's pryde " — never visits. 



