NIGHTINGALE. 91 



which are hatched in June, often leave the nest and 

 hop about on the ground in its neighbourhood before 

 they are able to fly. 



Here again let me 'enter a plaint' in behalf of 

 the bird and her nest. He who takes a Nightingale's 

 nest robs his neighbour as well as the owner of it, 

 and is guilty at once of burglary and petty larceny. 

 Mr. Meyer observes, 'The attachment of this species 

 to its young, and its grief at their loss, have been 

 noticed by many writers, ancient and modern. Our 

 friend, the Rev. E. J. Moor, sends us, on this subject, 

 a memorandum from his journal: 'One evening while 

 I was at college,' he says, 'happening to drink tea 

 with the late Rev. J. Lambert, fellow of Trinity College, 

 he told me the following facts illustrative of Virgil's 

 extreme accuracy in describing natural objects. We 

 had been speaking of those well-known lovely lines in 

 the fourth Georgic on the Nightingale's lamentation 

 for the loss of her young, when Mr. Lambert told me 

 that riding once through one of the toll-gates near 

 Cambridge, he observed the keeper of the gate and 

 his wife, who were aged persons, apparently much 

 dejected. Upon inquiring into the cause of their 

 uneasiness, the man assured Mr. Lambert that he and 

 his wife had both been made very unhappy by a Night- 

 ingale, which had built in their garden, and had the 

 day before been robbed of its young. This loss she 

 had been deploring in such a melancholy strain all 

 the night, as not only to deprive him and his wife of 

 sleep, but also to leave them in the morning full of 

 sorrow; from which they had evidently not recovered 

 when Mr. Lambert saw them.' 



