When Darkness has fallen. 109 



flute-like mellowness and wild sweetness of its 

 song give it a high place among British warblers 

 next only to the nightingale. The blackcap 

 has neither the fulness nor the force, but it has 

 all and more of the former's purity. This little 

 hideling, with its timid obtrusiveness, never 

 strays far from cultivation. One provision it 

 requires, and this is seclusion. Its shy and 

 retiring habits teach it to search out dense 

 retreats, and it is rarely seen. If observed on 

 the confines of its corral of boughs it immediately 

 begins to perform a series of evolutions until 

 it has placed a dense screen of brushwood 

 between itself and the observer. 



Many times have we heard the round, full, 

 lute-like plaintiveness of the nightingale, sounds 

 that seem to seize and ingrain themselves in the 

 very soul, that " make the wild blood start in 

 its mystic springs." To us the delicious triumph 

 of the bird's song lies in its utter abandon. The 

 lute-like sweetness, the silvery liquidness, the 

 bubbling and running over, and the wild, gurgling 

 "jug, jug, jug!" To say this, and more that 

 the nightingale is a mad, sweet polyglot, that it 

 is the sweetest of English warblers, the essence 

 and quintessence of song, that it is the whole 

 wild bird achievement in one these are feeble, 

 feeble ! This " light-winged dryad of the trees " 

 is still " in some melodious spot of beechen 



