THE NIGHTINGALE. 
679 
bird, with great exactitude. The worth of a Nightingale 
is greatly enhanced by its assiduously singing during the 
night, an accomplishment by no means common to every 
individual, and generally limited to the best performers : 
these' are real treasures to the neighbourhood, and the pity 
is, that the song of the Nightingale lasts so short a time in 
its full purity. Unfortunately, these wonderful songsters 
usually become silent about Midsummer-day. Thus, in our 
neighbourhood, May is the only month to whose thousand 
beauties is added that of the Nightingale’s song. 
The nest of this bird is a very simple structure, and is 
generally placed just above or on the ground, amongst 
thick shrubs, under a tuft of grass, or in the herbage at 
the foot of the trunk of a tree.* It is principally 
composed of dead leaves, dry twigs, and haulm, lined 
inside with fine grass-stalks. In the beginning of May 
the female lays four or five eggs: these are rather large 
and smooth-shelled, of a pale sea-green, minutely and 
closely stippled with gray-brown. Male and female sit 
alternately for fourteen days, and rear their young 
together: the latter are fledged in about three weeks, 
after which the males begin to practise singing, taking 
their lesson from the father. Unfortunately, like other 
young birds, they are subject to an infinity of dangers, 
and only too many fall victims to birds of prey and 
rapacious mammals. With us they are only captured 
for the cage. Spaniards and Italians, however, like the 
ancient Eomans, do not even spare the Nightingale, but 
offer it up, along with other song-birds, to their gluttonous 
appetites. Fortunately, many, somehow or another, 
manage to escape, and enjoy an existence which we might 
well envy them, so much purer is it than our own. 
* • 
* I have seen a Nightingale’s nest, in an ivy-covered tree, ten feet from the 
ground.— IF. J. 
