THE NIGHTINGALE WABBLEK. 383 



for a few days; and it is then that the bird-catchers are most 

 successful in making prize of them. 



About two weeks after their arrival, they betake themselves 

 to the woods, and are soon in full song, continuing the greater 

 part of the night with little intermission, and evidently sing- 

 ing against each other. They do not sing from the very 

 depth of close forests, but from the tall and thick trees that 

 are near open places, abounding in underwood or other cover 

 upon the ground. After the incubation begins, the song is 

 less incessant, and as the broods come to maturity, it gradu- 

 ally ceases. In severe drought, it does not begin till dark, 

 and it ceases at an early hour in the morning; but when 

 the air is moist, it begins earlier, and is continued longer. 

 A very dry season, after the nesting has been some time in 

 progress, will cause it to cease altogether; but if a shower 

 comes, it will break out anew; and it will do so the more 

 readily and the more powerfully, if the shower has fallen 

 during the day, with just a blink of clear before sunset. 



From their retiring disposition, the habits of nightingales, 

 in a state of nature, must always be, to a very considerable 

 extent, conjectural, because instead of being able to follow 

 them in the details of their history, it is not easy to see the 

 same one twice. I watched them very carefully for more 

 than five years, in a place where they are very abundant, 

 and at the end of that time, I was about as wise as at the 

 beginning. 



It appears that the principal food of nightingales is the 

 caterpillars of night-moths, and probably also of some of the 

 night-beetles. It is the habit of these larvae to feed only, or 

 chiefly, during the night, and to retire during the day. In 

 damp weather, when vegetation is succulent, they of course 

 come out in the greatest numbers; a much shorter interval 

 suffices for the nightingale satisfying himself, or procuring a 

 meal for his mate or his brood, and then he has time to sing; 



