VOICES OF THE NIGHT 
climate, or vegetation, since the surroundings 
which it finds suitable in Kent and Sussex 
are equally to be found down in the West 
Country, but fail to attract their share of 
nightingales. 
The song of the nightingale, in praise of 
which volumes have been written, is perhaps 
more beautiful than that of any other bird, 
though I have heard wonderful efforts from 
the mocking-bird in the United States and 
from the bulbuls along the banks of the 
Jordan. The latter are sometimes, more 
especially in poetry, regarded as identical 
with the nightingale ; and, indeed, some 
ornithologists hold the two to be closely 
related. What a gap there is between the 
sobbing cadences of the nightingale and the 
rasping note of the nightjar, which, with 
specific reference to a Colonial cousin of that 
bird Tasmanians ingeniously render as 
" more pork "lit seems almost ludicrous to 
include under the head of bird-song not only 
the music of the nightingale, but also the 
croak of the raven and the booming note of 
the ostrich. Yet these also are the love-songs 
of their kind, and the hen ostrich doubtless 
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