BIRDS IN THE CALENDAR 
able of the many problems confronting the 
student of distribution, and successive in- 
genious but unconvincing attempts to explain 
its seeming eccentricity, or at any rate ca- 
price, in the choice of its nesting range only 
make the confusion worse. Briefly, in spite of 
a number of doubtful and even suspicious 
reports of the bird's occurrence outside of 
these boundaries, it is generally agreed by 
the soundest observers that its travels do 
not extend much north of the city of York, 
or much west of a line drawn through Exeter 
and Birmingham. By way of complicating 
the argument, we know, on good authority, 
that the nightingale's range is equally 
peculiar elsewhere ; and that, whereas it like- 
wise shuns the departments in the extreme 
west of France, it occurs all over the Penin- 
sula, a region extending considerably farther 
into the sunset than either Brittany or Corn- 
wall, in both of which it is unknown. No 
satisfactory explanation of the little visitor's 
objection to Wild Wales or Cornwall has 
been found, and it may at once be stated 
that its capricious distribution cannot be 
accounted for by any known facts of soil, 
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