Nightingale. 157 



tastes, is never honoured by their presence. Some say that 

 dampness of soil, a trickling stream, or a moist meadow, is needed 

 to tempt it ; and M. Viellet declares it is partial to the vicinity 

 of an echo! Montagu propounded I know not with what 

 reason that possibly it is not to be found but where cowslips 

 grow plentifully ; but I think we have hardly mastered a know- 

 ledge of its requirements. It arrives here towards the end of 

 April or beginning of May ; and being of a very shy, timid 

 nature, seeks the thickest hedges and most impenetrable copses, 

 where, though so often listened to, it is rarely seen, and few are 

 acquainted with the form of the humble but elegant little brown 

 bird which charms them so much with its unrivalled song. 



It owes its generic name to the mythological writers, who 

 state that Philomela, the wife of Tereus, was turned into a 

 nightingale ; and the name was in use for that bird at all events 

 as long ago as the time of Catullus; and the specific name 

 hiscinia is conjectured by the B.O.U. Committee to be derived 

 from the root of A-aXo?, ' talkative/ and cano, c I sing.' In France 

 it is Eossignol ; in Portugal, Rouxinol ; in Spain, Ruisenor ; in 

 Germany, Naclitigall, which latter, as well as our ' Nightingale,' 

 is derived (as Pennant informs us) from Nacht, ' night,' and the 

 Saxon word yalan, ' to sing ;' not, however, that it is silent 

 during the day, but then the chorus of voices, loud and shrill 

 and numerous, drown it so that it cannot so readily be distin- 

 guished as in the witching hour of twilight, when other songsters 

 are hushed in repose. Not everywhere, however, is the Nightin- 

 gale known as a songster. In Egypt, to which it retires for the 

 winter, its voice, except its somewhat harsh alarm-note, is un- 

 known; just as the Redwing the 'Swedish Nightingale' though 

 notorious for its vocal powers in Norway and Sweden, is never 

 recognised while in its winter quarters here as capable of song.* 

 It is sad to think what vast numbers are caught in England by 

 the professional bird-catcher ; and that the modern inhabitants 

 of Malta, appreciating it more for the delicacy of its flesh than for 

 the quality of its song, persecute it unrelentingly ,f with about as 

 * Selby's ' Illustrations of British Ornithology,' vol. i., p. 207. 

 f Mr. C. A. Wright in Ibis for 1864, p. 66. 



