SONGS. 263 



would seem that in warm countries, as in Greece, 

 such females are pretty common, both in this species 

 and many others ; at least this is implied in a pas- 

 sage of Aristotle*." Aldrovand, in deducing lessons 

 of morality from this bird, thinks the female ought to 

 be imitated in her silence by women, who " in his 

 time," on the contrary, " were loquacious, babbling, 

 verbose, garrulous, talkative, tonguy, and never kept 

 secrets f.'' 



With respect, again, to Mr. Harrington's inference 

 that the want of song in the female is for the pur- 

 pose of concealing the eggs, Mr. Sweet further says, 

 " I certainly have never heard a thrush sing when 

 sitting," (as had been asserted by a correspondent in 

 a recent periodical work,) u perhaps for want of attend- 

 ing to it ; but I have frequently heard arid seen the 

 male black-cap sing while sitting on the eggs, and 

 have found its nest by it more than once ; the male 

 of this species sitting nearly as much as the female J." 

 These well-authenticated facts, as well as more that 

 we could adduce, are fatal to the theory. 



St. Ambrose, on the other hand, asserts that " the 

 nightingale by the sweetness of her song solaces her- 

 self during the long nights in which she is hatching 

 her eggs, watchful and sleepless /' 



Another hypothesis advocated by several naturalists, 

 and adopted by poets, is that the singing of birds is 

 the language of courtship and affection. " The song 

 of male birds," says Buffon, "springs from the emo- 

 tion of love : the canary in his cage, the green-bird 

 in the fields, the oriole in the woods, chaunt their 

 notes with a fond, sonorous voice, and their mates 



* Oiseaux, Art. Le Rosignol ; and Aristotle/ iv. 9. 

 p Loquaculse, argutulae, verbosoe, dicaculse, linguaces, garrulee 

 et arcanorum minime tenaces. Ornithol. ii. 346. 

 J Mag. of Nat. Hist, ii.113. 

 Quoted by Aldrovand as above, 



