A HUNT FOR THE NIGHTINGALE. 113 



ness and strength and a faint suggestion in it of 

 the nightingale's. But it was disappointing : I had 

 expected a nearer approach to its great rival. The 

 bird was very shy, but did finally show herself fairly 

 several times, as she did also near Selborne, where 

 I heard the song oft repeated and prolonged. It 

 is a ringing, animated strain, but as a whole seemed 

 to me crude, not smoothly and finely modulated. I 

 could name several of our own birds that surpass it 

 in pure music. Like its congeners, the garden war- 

 bler and the white-throat, it sings with great empha- 

 sis and strength, but its song is silvern, not golden. 

 " Little birds with big voices," one says to himself 

 after having heard most of the British songsters. 

 My path led me an adventurous course through the 

 copses and bottoms and open commons, in the long 

 twilight. At one point I came upon three young 

 men standing together and watching a dog that was 

 working a near field, one of them probably the 

 squire's son, and the other two habited like laborers. 

 In a little thicket near by there was a brilliant cho- 

 rus of bird voices, the robin, the song-thrush, and 

 the blackbird, all vying with each other. To my in- 

 quiry, put to test the reliability of the young coun- 

 trymen's ears, they replied that one of the birds 

 I heard was the nightingale, and, after a moment's 

 attention, singled out the robin as the bird in ques- 

 tion. This incident so impressed me that I paid lit- 

 tle attention to the report of the next man I met, 

 who said he had heard a nightingale just around a 

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