86 A HUNT FOR THE NIGHTINGALE. 



(The country people in this part of England sir 

 one at the end of every sentence, and talk with an 

 indescribable drawl.) 



But I had heard a cuckoo that very afternoon, and 

 I took heart from the fact. I afterward learned that 

 the country people everywhere associate these two 

 birds in this way ; you will not hear the one after 

 the other has ceased. But I heard the cuckoo almost 

 daily till the middle of July. Matthew Arnold re- 

 flects the popular opinion, when in one of his poems 

 (" Thyrsis ") he makes the cuckoo say in early 

 June, 



" The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I ! " 

 The explanation is to be found in Shakespeare, who 



; the cuckoo is in June 



Heard, not regarded," 



as the bird really does not go till August. I got out 

 my Gilbert White, as I should have done at an 

 earlier day, and was still more disturbed to find that 

 he limited the singing of the nightingale to June 

 15th. But seasons differ, I thought, and it can't be 

 possible that any class of feathered songsters all stop 

 on a given day. There is a tradition that when 

 George I. died the nightingales all ceased singing for 

 the year out of grief at the sad event ; but his maj- 

 esty did not die till June 21st. This would give me a 

 margin of several days. Then, when I looked further 

 in White, and found that he says the chaffinch ceases 

 to sing the beginning of June, I took more courage, 



