30 LOCALITIES FOR BUILDING. 



Minstrel of sorrow ! native of the dark ! 



Shrub-loving Philomel, that wooed the dews, 



At midnight from their starry beds, and charmed 



Held them around thy song till dawn awoke ; 



Sad bird, pour through the gloom thy weeping song, 



Pour all thy dying melody of grief, 



And with the turtle spread the wave of woe. 



But for our own part, we are more inclined to agree with 

 Coleridge, and say that it is 



the merry Nightingale, 



That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates, 

 With fast, thick warble, his delicious notes, 

 As he were fearful that an April night 

 Would be too short for him to utter forth 

 His love-chaunt, and disburthen his full soul 

 Of all its music. 



The localities most usually chosen by the Nightingale 

 are woods having thick undergrowths, low coppices, plan- 

 tations, and hedgerows ; low damp meadows near streams 

 are much frequented by it. The English counties which 

 the bird most favours are Kent, Surrey, Middlesex, and 

 Hampshire, because it finds there woods, groves, brakes, 

 shrubberies, copses, and thickets, not far from streams, 

 brooks, and springs, where insect life abounds. Next to 

 the above counties are Berks, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Herts, 

 and Sussex ; in some other counties the music of the 

 Nightingale is heard now and then as a great rarity ; 

 thus we find it recorded in 1855 as a memorable event 

 that l One was heard in Yorkshire, when hundreds of 

 persons went nightly to hear its song, which was so en- 

 chanting that numbers walked the footpaths and fields the 

 whole of the night, and as early as three o'clock in the morn- 

 ing warm beds were forsaken by hundreds of married and 

 single, old maids and bachelors, to go to hear the Nightin- 

 gale. At last the visitors became so numerous, and the 

 damage so great to the crops and fences by being trampled 

 and broken down, that it was found necessary to snare 

 the bird.' 



Let us hope that the music in this case was more real 

 than that which deceived the good people of Shrewsbury 



