446 THE THRUSH FAMILY 



The nightingale's song owes much, then, to place and time, and 

 much to the associations with which it is blent, but it owes also 

 and primarily much to its own inherent beauty. On this point we 

 may trust to the judgment of one who is not only a student of 

 bird-lore, but a master of music : "It is a pity to compare the songs 

 of birds ; our best singers, thrush, blackbird, blackcap, robin, 

 and garden-warbler, all have a vocal beauty of their own; but it 

 may safely be said that none approaches the nightingale in fire and 

 fervour of song, or in the combination of extraordinary power with 

 variety of phrase. He seems to do what he likes with his voice, 

 yet never to play with it ; so earnest is he in every utterance and 

 these come at intervals, sometimes even a long silence making the 

 performance still more mysterious that if I were asked how to dis- 

 tinguish his song from the rest, I should be inclined to tell my 

 questioner to wait by a wood till he is fairly startled by a bird that 

 puts his whole ardent soul into his song." l 



It is this same fervour that Wordsworth, more than any other 

 poet, has caught and expressed : 



" Nightingale ! thou surely art 

 A creature of a fiery heart ! 

 These notes of thine they pierce and pierce ; 

 Tumultuous harmony and fierce ! " 



The variety in the nightingale's song may be judged from the 

 fact that a good songster has been computed to have over twenty 

 different phrases, and in these taken together not less than fifty 

 separate notes. The number of notes uttered by the species would 

 reach a much higher total, as the songs of individuals vary, most of 

 them no doubt introducing into their phrases notes borrowed from 

 other species. 



One sometimes asks what impression is made on other birds 

 by the song of the nightingale. It is to be feared little. One day 

 when I stood listening to his ringing anthem, a little brown body 



1 W. Warde Fowler, A Year with the Birds, 2nd edit., p. 106. 



