349 
A HISTORY OF THE NIGHTINGALE; 
the season—at least as a general rule; and the true cause of the cessation of their 
melody is very evident on dissection. Should the male bird, however, be deprived 
Of his mate, he will sometimes (as proved by an experiment of Montagu) endea¬ 
vour to attract another by resuming his strains; but I am disposed to regard 
this as an exception rather than the rule. I know, from direct observation in the 
ease of the Robin, that birds do not always try to win a second mate when the 
first is destroyed; and the instance to which I allude is the more remarkable, as 
the death of the female happened early in April. 
In ordinary circumstances, when the Nightingale is pouring forth his music, 
concealed in a bush, he will not suffer himself to be approached too near; and 
though he does not immediately fly, he ceases to sing, and signifies his displeasure 
by emitting the peculiar harsh croak already spoken of, and which resembles the 
sound err , or can% pronounced with a rolling of the rs; and if upon his repeating 
this three or four times, the intruder should not retire, he flits to another bush, 
where he immediately recommences his abrupt stanzas; yet if we advance 
gradually, and by slow degrees, so that he should not be startled (and he will 
oftentimes thus permit of a closer approach than the generality of singing birds), 
he will then sometimes shew himself; and warble loudly within a couple of 
yards of the spectator, when the considerable dilatation of his throat will be very 
obvious, and when it is impossible not to admire the lightness and elegance of 
his form and movements, particularly as shewn by the amazingly long hops 
which, with effortless ease, he takes from bough to bough. 
The song-notes of the Nightingale are less innate than in the generality of 
singing birds, in consequence of which those individuals which are raised in 
captivity are far less musical than the birds which are captured wild in spring—■ 
that is, unless they are brought up under a wild-caught bird of their species, 
Mr. Sweet remarks, that 44 a young Nightingale is apt to catch all that it hears, 
and to be deficient of many of the Ordinary notes of its species. I had one,” he 
continues, 44 for three years, and it never sung a stave worth listening to; at 
length I turned it out [fit may be presumed about the end of summer, when it 
had discontinued singing, for earlier in the season it Would undoubtedly have 
proceeded northward], and it remained in the gardens round the house till it left 
the country in autumn; it returned to the same place the following spring, where 
I instantly recognized it by its bad song; and it continued in the neighbourhood 
all the summer, and bred up a nest of young ones.”* This case will suffice to 
* The individual observation of the author of 1British Warblers may doubtless be extended to 
the whole species, but we entirely disagree with Mr. Blyth in his inference from the circumstance. 
We believe the song-notes of the Nightingale to be as innate as those of any other feathered 
chorister; the only difference being, in our opinion, in the relative development of the faculty 
of Imitation, which, exercised early, causes the bird to acquire strains which modify or wholly 
absorb its more natural melody. —Ed. 
3 A 
VOL. III.—-NO. XXII. 
