Behaviour of Birds 
such a sprinkling of foison gas that the men 
were compelled, as the air was heavily charged 
with gas-fumes, to wear theirrespirators. To 
their amazement a NIGHTINGALE burst into 
song in the very wood in which they were 
halted (Observer, 19.1.19). An eye-witness 
speaks of a NIGHTINGALE which sang his 
spring song of passion in the derelict garden 
of a shattered nunnery while shells shrieked 
overhead (Daily Mail, 9.v.17); and another 
observer writes: ‘‘ The song of the NIGHT- 
INGALE seemed to come all the more sweetly 
and clearly in the quiet intervals between 
the bursts of firing. There was something 
infinitely sweet and sad about it, as if the 
countryside were singing gently to itself in 
the midst of all our noise and confusion and 
muddy work; so that you felt the NIGHTIN- 
GALE’S song was the only real thing which 
would remain when all the rest was long past 
and forgotten. It is such an old song too, 
handed on from NIGHTINGALE to NIGHTINGALE 
through the summer nights of so many in- 
numerable years’’ (Bird Notes and News, 
vol. vil. p. 14). 
114 
