j io Poachers and Poaching. 



green and shadows numberless, singing of summer 

 in full-throated ease," and here she will remain. 

 Unlike the songs of some of our warblers, hers 

 can never be reproduced. Attempt to translate 

 it, and it eludes you, only its meagre skeleton 

 remains. Isaac Walton, in his quaint eloquence, 

 tries to say what he felt: "The nightingale, 

 another of my airy creatures, breathes such 

 sweet, loud music out of her little instrumental 

 throat, that it might make mankind to think 

 miracles are not ceased. He that at mid- 

 night .... should hear, as I have very often, 

 the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural 

 rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling 

 of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, 

 and say, ' Lord, what music hast Thou provided 

 for the saints in heaven, when Thou affordest 

 bad men such music on earth !' ' 



Although Britain can show no parallel either 

 in number or brilliance to the living lights of 

 the tropics, we are not without several interesting 

 phosphorescent creatures of our own. Those 

 whose business leads them abroad in the fields 

 and woods through the short summer nights are 

 often treated to quite remarkable luminous sights. 

 Last night the writer was lying on a towering 

 limestone escarpment, waiting to intercept a 

 gang of poachers. The darkness was dead and 

 unrelieved, and a warm rain studded every grass 



