2938 Tue ZooLoctst—FEBRvARY, 1872. 
description of all the appliances for the sport which are mentioned 
by Shakespeare, and by an interesting account of the price paid in 
his day for hawks, has given us a good idea of the estimation in 
which falconry was then held, especially by royal personages. He 
also furnishes us with a list of the various contrivances anciently 
used by fowlers. When percussion-caps and breech-loaders were 
not, the tables of the wealthy had to be supplied with game through 
the aids of snares, springes, nets, &c., and the capture of game in 
what we should now consider a poaching fashion must in those 
times have been a great art. There are abundant references in the 
plays and writings of Shakespeare to all these engines, which 
teach us how generally they were used. 
We should naturally expect in the writings of a poet that the 
birds of song, which have always been dear to the Muse, would 
be often introduced. The nightingale, the lark, and other songsters 
have the honour of mention in the works of Shakespeare, some of 
whose most exquisite lyrics they have inspired. Mr. Harting has 
gone at length into the old beliefs about the song-birds, especially 
with reference to the nightingale. Shakespeare was well acquainted 
with the legends of the old mythologies, and alludes to them con- 
tinually. -He generally calls the nightingale Philomel. It was a 
poetic theory that the nightingale sang only by night, and then in 
a wood with her breast pressed against a thorn. It is not quite 
clear what was the origin of this last superstition. Some have 
found an explanation of it in the brambly copses in which the 
nightingale nests and roosts; and the Rev. A. C. Smith, in the 
‘Zoologist’ for 1862 (Zool. 8029) has actually related the occur- 
rence “on two occasions of a strong thorn projecting upwards in 
the centre of the nightingale’s nest.” But this can be regarded as 
no more than an undesigned misfortune to the comfort of the tiny 
architect, and as in no way connected with the old idea that the 
nightingale practised penance by self-impalation. Mr. Harting 
correctly says that the nightingale sings as often by day as by 
night. The poet who spoke of 
“ The nightingale that all day long 
Did cheer the village by her song,” 
was better informed about the habits of our chief song-bird than 
the majority of his brother bards. As far as our own experience 
goes, the nightingale is capricious in the times and places she 
