510 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY. [Book X. 



breath, it will prolong its note, and then at another, will vary 

 it with different inflexions; then, again, it will break into 

 distinct chirrups, or pour forth an endless series of roulades. 

 Then it will warble to itself, while taking breath, or else dis- 

 guise its voice in an instant ; while sometimes, again, it will 

 twitter to itself, now with a full note, now with a grave, now 

 again sharp, now with a broken note, and now with a prolonged 

 one. Sometimes, again, when it thinks fit, it will break 

 out into quavers, and will run through, in succession, alto, 

 tenor, and bass : in a word, in so tiny a throat is to be found 

 all the melody that the ingenuity of man has ever discovered 

 through the medium of the invention of the most exquisite 

 flute : so much so, that there can be no doubt it was an in- 

 fallible presage of his future sweetness as a poet, when one of 

 these creatures perched and sang on the infant lips of the 

 poet Stesichorus. 



That there may remain no doubt that there is a certain 

 degree of art in its performances, we may here remark that 

 every bird has a number of notes peculiar to itself; for they 

 do not, all of them, have the same, but each, certain melodies 

 of its own. They vie with one another, and the spirit 

 with which they contend is evident to all. The one that 

 is vanquished, often dies in the contest, and will rather yield 

 its life than i'ts song. The younger birds are listening in the 

 meantime, and receive the lesson in song from which they 

 are to profit. The learner hearkens with the greatest attention, 

 and repeats what it has heard, and then they are silent by 

 turns ; this is understood to be the correction of an error on the 

 part of the scholar, and a sort of reproof, as it were, on the 

 part of the teacher. Hence it is that nightingales fetch as 

 high a price as slaves, and, indeed, sometimes more than used 

 formerly to be paid for a man in a suit of armour. 



I know that on one occasion six thousand sesterces 28 were 

 paid for a nightingale, a white one it is true, a thing that is 

 hardly ever to be seen, to be made a present of to Agrippina, the 

 wife of the Emperor Claudius. A nightingale has been often 

 seen that will sing at command, and take alternate parts with 

 the music that accompanies it ; men, too, have been found who 

 could imitate its note with such exactness, that it would be 

 impossible to tell the difference, by merely putting water in a 

 28 1227 francs, Ajasson says. 



