342 SUMMER. 



tion of the problem, would be to find what there is 

 peculiar in the entomology of the nightingale districts. 

 Where the temperature and facilities for nesting and 

 concealment are the same, the only hypothesis that we 

 can rationally take up for a bird which is left to the 

 free range of nature, preferring one district to another, 

 is that of food. Caprice, in the sense in which we 

 apply it to man, there can be none. 



It has been alleged that there are three varieties of 

 the nightingale, that severally select the mountain, 

 the champaign, and the marsh ; but the distinction 

 appears to be confined to the fancies of those who made 

 it, and the credulity of those that believe them. It 

 has been alleged that the nightingales of one district 

 are superior to those of another, and something may 

 possibly depend upon a difference in the quantity or 

 quality of food ; but no satisfactory conclusion can be 

 drawn from the assertion, unless the same observer 

 could be in the two places at the same moment. We 

 have no means of knowing that the birds that come to 

 any place are those that were reared there ; the young 

 birds do not sing the year that they are hatched ; and 

 though they should be different when kept in confine- 

 ment, we could not draw any conclusion from that. 

 The quaint observation that " Those who cannot speak 

 certainly, certainly speak," will apply to a great deal 

 of the speech about nightingales and many other pro- 

 ductions of nature, that has found its way into print. 

 The habits of the bird are retired, and difficult to study; 

 but it is exceedingly interesting, and therefore those 

 who wish to be thought wise upon the subject of birds 

 must say something about it. 



