NIGHTINGALE. 319 



in accordance with facts, as now known, and granting that our 

 visitors come mainly from countries lying due south of us, it 

 appears that the line they take doubtless fixed by some 

 natural peculiarities of the districts they avoid, though one 

 cannot pretend to say what those peculiarities are is by no 

 means so straight as he supposed. The Exe and the south- 

 east of Glamorganshire lie considerably to the westward of 

 Cape la Hogue, the Channel Islands and Britany, so that to 

 reach these places the flight must be accordingly deflected. 

 This is only what is believed to be the case with other summer 

 birds-of-passage, and evidence is wanting to shew that it is 

 otherwise with the Nightingale.* 



The bill is brown ; the irides hazel : the head, body and 

 wings above, of a uniform rich brown, tinged with reddish- 

 chestnut ; the tail still more rufous ; the lower surface dull 

 greyish-white, lighter on the chin and throat, darker on the 

 breast ; lower tail-coverts pale reddish-white : legs, toes and 

 claws, brown. 



The whole length, six inches and three-eighths. From 

 the carpus to the end of the longest primary, three inches 

 and one quarter. 



The female in plumage resembles the male. The young 

 have buff spots on the tips of the feathers above ; and dark 

 margins to those beneath. 



Authors have been perplexed as to the proper name to be 

 applied to the several sections into which the Linnaean genus 

 Motacilla has been split by later writers, and none more than 

 that to which the Nightingale belongs. Without going into 

 technicalities, it will be enough here to say that the Editor 



* At least two unsuccessful attempts have been made to extend the range of 

 the Nightingale in this island. Mr. Dillwyn in his ' Materials for a Fauna and 

 Flora of Swansea,' mentions that the late Mr. Thomas Peurice, by bringing several 

 cages of birds from Norfolk, and turning them out into his woods at Kilvrough, 

 near Swansea, hoped to introduce the species to that locality, but the experiment 

 was a complete failure. The late Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster, in Caithness, as is 

 recounted in many works, had a great number of Nightingales' eggs sent to him 

 from London. These were placed in Redbreasts' nests, which had been previously 

 found, and the young were duly hatched and brought up by their foster-parents. 

 But to no purpose was all this done, for in September the young Nightingales 

 disappeared and never returned to the place of their birth. 



