Xft WHITE'S SELBORNE 



than once, laying it down as an ornithological maxim that 

 as long as incubation is going on, there is music. Of 

 such songsters he specifies the yellowhammer as the most 

 persistent, the late estival chorus being additionally strength- 

 ened by the woodlark, wren, redbreast, whitethroat, goldfinch, 

 linnet, and swallow, whose caressing warble he justly includes 

 in the strain of the minstrels. His favorite chorister, besides 

 the nightingale, was the blackcap, " with his full, deep, sweet, 

 loud, and wild pipe " and soft and varied modulations, the 

 wild sweetness of which always brought to his mind the lines 

 of the song in "As You Like It," 



" And turn his merry note 

 Unto the sweet bird's throat." 



Among English songsters, the nightingale has been so 

 extolled as to have left comparatively little room for his 

 rivals, the blackbird, blackcap, and thrush. These, never- 

 theless, especially the two former, are held by not a few to 

 be on a par with the favorite bird of the poets. 1 No one who 

 has heard them will forget the clear, ringing, liquid notes of 

 the blackbird and thrush, and the soft, flute-like tones of the 

 blackcap's "breezy strain." The nightingale of the Surrey 

 lanes and Middlesex copses, however, is said to be quite dis- 

 tinct, so far as his voice is concerned, from his brother in the 

 west, wruere he is regarded as but a feeble performer in com- 

 parison. To " listen to the nightingale," one must be upon 

 the scene early in the season, preferably near London, and 

 then await the pleasure of the minstrel, who is fickle and capri- 

 cious in his singing, and whose season of song at the longest 

 is extremely brief. 



It is less as an analyst of avian melody, or a poetical inter- 

 preter of the beauties of outward nature, than as a chronicler 



1 Amongst our charming song-birds, I must not omit the blackcap, which is, 

 I think, quite on an equality with the nightingale. Mr. Symes thought that its 

 mellow notes are equal, if not superior in richness of tone, to any in the nightin- 

 gale's song, and in this opinion I perfectly agree with him. EDWARD JESSE, 

 Scenes and Occupations of a Country Life. 



There is no note so sweet and deep and melodious as that of the blackbird 

 to be heard in our fields ; it is even richer than the nightingale's, though not so 

 varied. RICHARD JEFFERIES, Wild Life in a Southern County. 



