THE NIGHTINGALE. 
57 
even till the stock and ring doves have, by their soft mur- 
murings, lulled each other to rest, and then he pours forth 
his full tide of melody. 
Listening Philomela deigns 
To let them joy, and purposes, in thought 
Elate, to make her night excel their day. 
t Thomson. 
It is a great subject of astonishment that so small a bird 
should be endowed with such potent lungs. If the evening 
is calm, it is supposed that its song may be heard above 
half a mile. This bird, the ornament and charm of the 
spring and early summer evenings, as it arrives in April, 
and continues singing till June, disappears on a sudden 
about September or October, when it leaves England to pass 
the winter in the North of Africa and Syria. Its visits to 
England are limited to certain counties, mostly in the 
south and east; as, though it is plentiful in the neighbourhood 
of London, and along the south coast in Sussex, Hampshire, 
and Dorsetshire : it is not found in either Cornwall or 
Wales. As soon as the young are hatched, the song of the 
male bird ceases, and he only utters a harsh croak, by way 
of giving alarm when any one approaches the nest. Night- 
ingales are sometimes reared up, and doomed to the prison 
of a cage ; in this state they sing ten months in the year, 
though in their wild life they sing only as many weeks. 
Bingley says that a caged Nightingale sings much more 
sweetly than those which we hear abroad in the spring. 
4 
