32 
NIGHTINGALE. 
the meadows, mouse-liuntiiig, or tlie harsh chatter of the 
sedge-hird, or the craik, craik, of tlie daker calling to 
his mate. The song of the nightingale has been a favourite 
theme with poets in all ages, and none of them have exag- 
gerated its sweetness or its variety. Every year, directly 
the nightingales arrive, we have the London bird-catchers 
down here with their traps and mealworms, and a great 
proportion of the earliest arrivals are conveyed to town. 
In the time of Virgil they used to take the nestlings : — 
Qualis populea moerens Philomela sub umbra 
Amissos queritur foetus, quos durus arator 
Observans nido implumes, detraxit ; 
but with us the bird-catchers only care for the old birds, 
and it is really wonderful how soon they manage to subdue 
all the untameableness which wild birds first exhibit. It 
is quite a science to break the spirit of these children of 
Nature, to bring them into artificial habits, to box them up 
in darkened cages and to feed them with strange food, and 
what is still more astonishing, to make them sing quite as 
well as in a state of freedom. 
THE NIGHXrNGALE-TRAP. 
