78 OUR IRISH SONG BIRDS. 



in the list of Irish songsters, for the supposed specimen 

 preserved in the Museum, Queen's College, Cork, has 

 been identified as a Rufous Warbler. Still I may 

 perhaps be forgiven for retaining in a work on Irish 

 Songsters a brief account of the most famous songster 

 in the world. 



The partial distribution of the Nightingale is a very 

 curious circumstance. It has been said never to have 

 arrived further north in England than Carlisle and 

 Scarborough, its most northerly breeding-place being 

 a wood near Doncaster ; and yet it is found in Siberia, 

 in Russia, and in Sweden. In Scotland a pair are said 

 to have bred in Calder Wood, in West Lothian. In 

 Wales it is unknown. 



It has been supposed by some naturalists that the 

 migrations of the bird are almost due north and south, 

 and that it never passes to the westward of three degrees 

 west longitude ; this would exclude part of Devonshire, 

 all Cornwall, part of Cheshire, and all North Wales. 

 The only reason that has been assigned for this curious 

 fact is that the West of England and Wales do not pro- 

 duce the vegetation upon which the insects feed that 

 constitute the staple food of the Nightingale. Others 

 have thought that this bird usually avoids a hilly 

 country ; that it flies low, and that the east of England 

 is best suited to its habits, as being for the most part flat. 

 It has been noticed also that where hills do occur, the 

 Nightingale seeks other localities, and is found for the 

 most part in the cultivated plains. Rumours that a 

 Nightingale has been heard singing are common enough 

 from time to time both in Wales and in Ireland ; but on 

 inquiry it has always been found that some other night 

 singer has been mistaken for the queen of song. 



