86 NIGHTINGALE. 



with the struggle to outvie him. Pliny, too, says 'They 

 emulate one another, and the contention is plainly an animated 

 one. The conquered often ends its life, its spirit failing 

 sooner than its song/ It has been known to imitate the 

 human voice. 



It is the opinion of Mr. Charles Muskett, of Norwich, as 

 expressed in a letter to me, that the older the bird, the more 

 perfect the song. The voice of the Nightingale may be heard, 

 it is said, when the air is calm, to fill a space of a mile in 

 diameter. Meyer says that a young one, taken from the nest, 

 has been known to sing on the seventh day after its removal, 

 and as it was conjectured to be about nine days old when 

 taken, its musical career was commenced on the sixteenth 

 day of its existence. They sing by day as well as by night. 

 I have heard them on every side of me in Edlington Wood, 

 near Doncaster, a place where they abound. Mr. Newman 

 relates in the 'Magazine of Natural History,' volume v, page 

 654, that on the 12th. of December, either in 1823 or 1824, 

 he heard the Nightingale singing clearly and distinctly, 

 although not very loudly, at Grodalming, in Surrey. He also 

 mentions that he has seen it in that neighbourhood in the 

 month of October, and once in November. The poet Cowper 

 has some stanzas addressed 'To the Nightingale, which the 

 author heard sing on New Year's Day, 1792.' 



The nest of the Nightingale, which is almost always placed 

 on the ground, in some natural hollow, amongst the roots 

 of a tree, on a bank, or at the foot of a hedgerow, though 

 sometimes two or three feet from the surface, is very loosely 

 put together, and is formed of various materials, such as 

 dried stalks of grasses, and leaves, small fibrous roots, and 

 bits of bark, lined with a few hairs and the finer portions 

 of the grass. It is about five inches and a half in external 

 diameter, by about three internally, and about three and a 

 half deep. 



Here again let me 'enter a plaint' in behalf of the bird 

 and her nest. He who robs a Nightingale's nest robs his 

 neighbour, as well as the owner of it, and is guilty at once 

 of burglary and petty larceny. Mr. Meyer observes, 'The 

 attachment of this species to its young, and its grief at 

 their loss, have been noticed by many writers, ancient and 

 modern. Our friend, the Rev. E. J. Moor, sends us, on this 

 subject a memorandum from his journal: 'one evening, while 

 I was at college,' he says, 'happening to drink tea with the 



