300 HABITS OF BIRDS. 



Enucleator, TEMMINCK) is said to enliven the summer 

 nights with its song- * ; and the same bird is found 

 in the no less unfrequented forests of Siberia and 

 Lapland t- 



Captain Cook, when off the coast of New Zealand, 

 says, " We were charmed the whole night with the 

 songs of innumerable species of birds from the 

 woods which beautify the shores of this unfrequented 

 island J." 



With respect to the popular notion founded on 

 the theoretical reasoning of Buffon, in the passage 

 just quoted, M. Vaillant justly remarks, <e It is quite a 

 prejudice that the birds of warm climates are more 

 brilliant than ours, witness our king-fisher and jay ; 

 or that they do not sing ; for the song-birds, both in 

 Africa and America, equal, and often surpass, our 

 European birds ." The traveller, Bruce, also tells 

 us that the song of the lark, in Abyssinia, did not 

 appear to differ from that of the European larks ; and 

 M. Savigny, as we have already mentioned, heard 

 the white-throat singing in Egypt. All the oriental 

 poets, indeed, introduce the music of the groves as 

 an indispensable accompaniment in their finest de- 

 scriptions. King Solomon says, " The time of the 

 singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle 

 is heard in our land || ;" and the naturalist, Hasel- 

 quist, found nightingales in Palestine, as M. Le 

 Marie had done in Africa. The Persian poet, Hafiz, 

 also, as well as the author of the * Ramayuna,' and 

 the Hindoo dramatist who wrote ' Sacontala/ are 

 loud in their praises of the music of birds ; while in 

 the Koran and the Arabian Tales they are often 

 mentioned^]". 



* Pennant, Arct. Zool. f Latham, iii. 3. 



J Voyages, i. Oiseaux de Paradise, i. 81. 



|| Cant, ii.12. 



11 J. Rennie on the Singing of Birds, Edinb, Mag. Jan, 1819, 

 p. 13. 



