EARLY MAY 27 
light fills the groves, as well as in the day 
when everything is bright, by soft, sweet 
songs of happy melody which speak content- 
edness and health. It is mainly from ignor- 
ance of the note of the nightingale, and 
from the fact that the singing season is so 
short and early in the year, when people do 
not get out much, that the bird is generally 
thought to sing only in the night. I have 
sometimes, when at Cambridge, played 
cricket all the afternoon to the accompani- 
ment of the song of several nightingales in 
the trees close by. A like delusion exists as 
to the plant the evening primrose (and similar 
species), thought to open only in the evening, 
but which in reality opens only to its full, 
like other plants, in bright sunshine. The 
facts of the case are that the nightingale is a 
bird, and one of the few of our British birds, 
that sings at night as well as in the day,’ 
and the buds of the evening primrose open 
as they mature, even when the sun is low, 
1 The thrush and the sedge warbler have been heard 
to sing at night in the nesting season. 
