92 TREATISE ON 



victory to man himself. " An intelligent Persiari 

 (says the late Sir William Jones, in his Dissertation 

 on the Musical Modes of the Hindus,) declared he 

 had more than once heen present when a celehrated 

 lutanist, surnamed Bulbul, (the nightingale,) was 

 playing to a large company, in a grove near Shiraz. 

 when he distinctly saw and heard the nightingales 

 tr5ring to vie with the musician, — sometimes war- 

 bling on the trees, — sometimes fluttering from 

 branch to branch, as if they wished to approach 

 the instrument, — and at length dropping on the 

 ground in a kind of ecstasy, from which they were 

 soon raised, he assured me, by a change in the 

 mode." 



M. Gerardin happening to saunter in the Jardin i 

 des Plantes, at Paris, in a fine spring evening, his • 

 ear was regaled with the melodious accents of two 

 nightingales. He instantly returned the compli- 

 ment by some passages of tender airs on his Ger- 

 man flute, when the feathered musicians approach- 

 ed him, — ^first in silence, — but, after listening for 

 a while, they sang in unison to his instrmnent, 

 and soon surpassed its powers. On raising his 

 key, first one-third, subsequently a whole octave, 

 they slirunk not from the challenge, and acquitted 

 themselves in such a style, as, by M. Gerardin's 

 own confession, to merit the vn-eath of victory. 



