314 SYLVIIDJ:. 



took two hundred and twenty-fire Nightingales all, except 

 some half-dozen, cock birds. The previous year the same men 

 supplied the dealer who employed them with two hundred 

 and eighty Nightingales, of which not more than sixty were 

 hens ! It is fortunate that this wholesale traffic is chiefly 

 limited to the neighbourhood of London, for it is very obvious 

 that no species can long withstand the carrying into captivity 

 of its most robust males immediately before the breeding- 

 season ; and the fact that Nightingales do not seem to be 

 diminishing throughout England as a whole is probably owing 

 to the increased protection generally afforded them by the 

 stricter practice of game-preserving which has sprung up of 

 late years, and guards from intrusion so many nooks beloved 

 of these and other wood-haunting birds. As will presently 

 be mentioned, there are several places in Europe where the 

 Nightingale has ceased to be more than a passing stranger, 

 and this purely owing, it is said, to the assiduity with which 

 the bird-catchers ply their trade.* 



The localities frequented by the Nightingale are woods 

 having thick undergrowth, low coppices, plantations, and 

 hedgerows. The extensive grounds around London which 

 are cultivated by market-gardeners, are, or would be, favourite 

 haunts of this bird ; low damp meadows near streams are 

 also affected; and Vieillot says it is partial to the vicinity 

 of an echo. From the pairing-time to the hatching of the 

 young, the male continues in full song, not only singing at 



* The Nightingale in a few instances has bred in confinement, and Sergeant- 

 Major Hanley, of the First Life Guards, communicated to the Zoological Society 

 (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1851, p. 196) the singular success which, owing to his careful 

 study of the bird's habits, attended his first attempt to domesticate the species. 

 He prepared a large cage, attaching a smaller one to each end of it, a passage 

 through all three being made. In the large cage he placed a small fir-tree planted 

 in a pot, and a plentiful supply of withered oak -leaves and moss. The smaller 

 cages he covered with green calico and filled with the twigs of a birch-broom, so 

 as to imitate as well as he could a thick hedge-bottom. All this he fixed high up 

 against a wall facing a window, and procuring from a bird-catcher two Nightin- 

 gales which had already paired, he turned them, as soon as they were used to cap- 

 tivity, into the triple cage. In about a week's time he had the satisfaction of 

 seeing the hen with an oak-leaf in her bill. She made her nest in one of the 

 small cages, laid four eggs and brought up three young. 



