NIGHTINGALE. 123 



fully realize their beauties without such a visit as I have 

 here attempted to describe, when the soft air and dewy 

 odours, the rich vegetation and varied sounds, have each 

 their charm ; the notes of the rails, the coots, and the 

 moorhens form the bass to the concert of the warblers 

 in the reeds ; and the strange sucking noise of the eels, 

 in the muddy channels, sounds as if the nymphs of those 

 quiet waters were giving and receiving the heartiest of 

 kisses, to their own entire satisfaction. 



PHILOMELA LUSCINIA (Linnaeus). 

 NIGHTINGALE. 



A regular summer visitant and breeds with us, 

 arriving in April* and leaving again in September. 

 Though not visiting us in large numbers, and being at the 

 same time very local in their habits, these lovely songsters 

 are, I believe, in certain localities, much more numerous 

 than in former years. The immediate vicinity of Norwich 

 is particularly rich in their " favourite haunts," and for 

 some weeks on their first arrival they may be heard, 

 both day and night, on the Ipswich, Newmarket, and 

 Unthank roads, and at Bracondale, Earlham, Thorpe, 



* The Eev. E. Forby, in his "Vocabulary of East Anglia," 

 assigns to the nightingale the local designation of the "Barley 

 Bird," as appearing in the season of sowing barley, or rather what 

 was formerly the accustomed season, the end of April or beginning 

 of May. I cannot say that I am familiar with this provincial name 

 for "querulous Philomela," and am inclined rather to adopt a 

 suggestion of Mr. Newton's, that the term " Barley Bird" is here 

 applied to the wrong species. It is a common provincial name for 

 the yellow wagtail in many parts of the country, and these wag- 

 tails often frequent fields of newly sown spring corn, whence the 

 the name " Barley Bird" would be applicable to them, though by 

 no means so to a purely woodland species like the nightingale. 



B2 



