n6 NATURE'S STORY OF THE YEAR 



turned aside to see what this new-comer, a badger, 

 intended. He abruptly disappeared. Making a 

 false step on dry litter, I disturbed the singer, who 

 fluttered from his perch, but only to the distance 

 of a few feet, and then resumed the song.. Dawn 

 was approaching ; the chill of the morning began 

 to be felt ; we were five miles from home, and had 

 to go. Since then, ten years have flown ; and the 

 bird has probably passed to the silence in which 

 his brilliant notes were so quickly lost ; yet, if in 

 his haunt live some descendants of that song, he is 

 not wholly dead, but in part lives on, gladdening 

 successive wanderers thither in the spring. 1 



Love maybe the key-note of the nightingale and 



1 It may be worth writing that exactly four years after 

 hearing this bird, I visited the same spot with the friend 

 who had previously accompanied me. We found a 

 nightingale singing magnificently within six feet of the 

 position occupied by the bird just described. My friend 

 remarked that the singer was uttering exactly the same 

 song that our former entertainer had given ; and at that 

 moment I was about to make the same observation, having 

 only been delayed in so doing by the thought that my 

 friend, who was a less enthusiastic student of bird-song, 

 might be sceptical of the statement. My friend was Mr. 

 J. F. Hooper, of Upton St. Leonards, and Gloucester. 



