510 
plint's natueal histoet. 
[Book X. 
breath, it will prolong its note, and then at another, will vary 
it with different inflexions; then, again, it will break into 
distinct chirrups, or pour forth an endless series of roulades. 
Then it will warble to itself, while taking breath, or else dis- 
guise its voice in an instant ; while sometimes, again, it will 
twitter to itself, now with a full note, now with a grave, now 
again sharp, now with a broken note, and now with a prolonged 
one. Sometimes, again, when it thinks fit, it will break 
out into quavers, and will run through, in succession, alto, 
tenor, and bass : in a word, in so tiny a throat is to be found 
all the melody that the ingenuity of man has ever discovered 
through the medium of the invention of. the most exquisite 
flute : so much so, that there can be no doubt it was an in- 
fallible presage of his future sweetness as a poet, when one of 
these creatures perched and sang on the infant lips of the 
poet Stesichorus. 
That there may remain no doubt that there is a certain 
degree of art in its performances, we may here remark that 
every bird has a number of notes peculiar to itself ; for they 
do not, all of them, have the same, but each, certain melodies 
of its own. They vie with one another, and the spirit 
with which they contend is evident to all. The one that 
is vanquished, often dies in the contest, and will rather yield 
its life than i'ts song. The younger birds are listening in the 
meantime, and receive the lesson in song from which they 
are to profit. The learner hearkens with the greatest attention, 
and repeats what it has heard, and then they are silent by 
turns ; this is understood to be the correction of an error on the 
part of the scholar, and a sort of reproof, as it were, on the 
part of the teacher. Hence it is that nightingales fetch as 
high a price as slaves, and, indeed, sometimes more than used 
formerly to be paid for a man in a suit of armour. 
I know that on one occasion six thousand sesterces were 
paid for a nightingale, a white one it is true, a thing that is 
hardly ever to be seen, to be made a present of to Agrippina, the 
wife of the Emperor Claudius. A nightingale has been often 
seen that will sing at command, and take alternate parts with 
the music that accompanies it ; men, too, have been found who 
could imitate its note with such exactness, that it would be 
impossible to tell the difierence, by merely putting water in a 
28 1227 francs, Ajasson says. 
