1 8 8 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. 



from Arcadia of an albino specimen a very common 

 occurrence, as all ornithologists know ; and that he 

 had very naturally put it down as a different 

 species, not having seen or heard of it elsewhere. 

 Lastly, he is careful to distinguish from the 

 Blackbird another of the family, not indeed the 

 Eing-ousel, which he does not seem to know, but the 

 beautiful blue Eock-thrush of Greece and the East, 

 which Canon Tristram tells us is probably the bird 

 alluded to in the passage of the Psalms as "the 

 Sparrow that sitteth alone on the house-top." J 



Our next bird shall be the Nightingale, the arjScbv, 

 the singer above all, fheprima donna of Aristophanes' 

 play. This is one of the birds about which incredible 

 stories have at all times been liable to grow up ; and 

 Aristotle had not learnt carefully to distinguish truth 

 from fiction, or had not been able to bring the fiction to 

 the test of experience. He tells us that the hen bird 

 sings as well as the cock until the eggs are laid ; 

 that the cock sings fifteen days and nights without 

 stopping. 2 Perhaps he did not mean his words to be 

 taken quite literally; anyhow the bird probably 

 sings more than almost any other while the leaves 

 are coming out on the trees. But in other respects 



1 H. A. ix. 19. Tristram, Natural History of the Bible, p. 202. 

 In ix. 21 a rock-bird is mentioned and called ictiavos, which may 

 possibly have been the Wall-creeper : see above, p. 29. 



2 H. A. ix. 49. B. 2 



