32 NIGHTINGALE.! 



the meadows, mouse-hunting, or the harsh chatter of the 

 sedge-bird, or the craik, craik, of the daker calling to 

 his mate. The song of the nightingale has heen a favourite 

 theme with poets in all ages, and none of them have exag- 

 gerated its sweetness or its variety. Every year, directly 

 the nightingales arrive, we have the London bird-catchers 

 down here with their traps and mealworms, and a great 

 proportion of the earliest arrivals are conveyed to town. 

 In the time of Virgil they used to take the nestlings : - 



Quails populea moerens Philomela sub umbra 

 Amissos queritur foetus, quos durus arator 

 Observans nido implumes, detraxit ; 



but with us the bird-catchers only care for the old birds, 

 and it is really wonderful how soon they manage to subdue 

 all the untameableness which wild birds first exhibit. It 

 is quite a science to break the spirit of these children of 

 Nature, to bring them into artificial habits, to box them up 

 in darkened cages and to feed them with strange food, and 

 what is still more astonishing, to make them sing quite as 

 well as in a state of freedom. 



THE NIGHTINGALE-TRAP. 



