SONGS. 289 



and from the softest trillings and swells to languish- 

 ing and lamentable sighs, which he as quickly 

 abandons, to return to his natural sprightliness*." 



But leaving the musical character of this song 

 out of consideration, it must be regarded as uniformly 

 the produce of a joyous and sportive state of feeling. 

 No bird sings when sad; for, though they can utter 

 sounds of sorrow when robbed of their nests or their 

 young, they never sing in such cases, as incorrectly 

 represented to do by Virgil, when he says 



(( Complaining in melodious moans, 



Sweet Philomel, beneath a poplar shade, 

 Mourns her lost young, which some rude village hind 

 Observing, from their nest unfledged has stole : 

 All night, she weeps, and, perch'd upon a bough, 

 With plaintive notes repeated fills the grove f." TRAP?. 

 This error, indeed, was exposed more than two 

 thousand years ago by Plato, who says justly, " No- 

 body can dream that any bird will sing when it is 

 hungry, when it is cold, or when it is afflicted with 

 any other pain, not even the nightingale itself, which 

 is said to sing from grief J." Albertus Magnus too 

 seems to have had a glimpse of the true state of the 

 case. In opposition to Aristotle, who says, " The 

 nightingale ceases to sing during incubation ," 

 Albertus asserts that it does " sing while it is hatching;" 

 and certain Platonists, he remarks, maintain that it 

 cannot vivify the eggs without singing, "which," adds 

 the naturalist, " appears to be true ; for the soft 

 air and warmth elevating the temperature of the blood 

 in these birds, stirs up in them the joyousness of song 

 and the desire of rejoicing, the heat of the parent 

 being higher during hatching than at any other 

 period ||. 



* Spectacle de la Nature, i. 156. t Georg. iv. 511 . 



} Phsedo. Hist. Anim. v.9. 



|| Hist. Anim. apud Aldrovand, ii.343. 



2 c 



