86 NIGHTINGALE. 
with the struggle to outvie him. Pliny, too, says, ‘They 
emulate one another, and the contention is plainly an animated 
one. The conquered often ends its life, its spirit failing 
sooner than its song.’ It has been known to imitate the 
human voice. 
It is the opmion of Mr. Charles Muskett, of Norwich, as 
expressed in a letter to me, that the older the bird, the more 
perfect the song. ‘The voice of the Nightingale may be heard, 
it is said, when the air is calm, to fill a space of a mile in 
diameter. Meyer says that a young one, taken from the nest, 
has been known to sing on the seventh day after its removal, 
and as it was conjectured to be about nine days old when 
taken, its musical career was commenced on the sixteenth 
day of its existence. They sing by day as well as by night. 
T have heard them on every side of me in Edlington Wood, 
near Doncaster, a place where they abound. Mr. Newman 
relates in the ‘Magazine of Natural History,’ volume vy, page 
654, that on the 12th. of December, either in 1823 or 1824, 
he heard the Nightingale singing clearly and distinctly, 
although not very loudly, at Godalming, in Surrey. He also 
mentions that he has seen it in that neighbourhood in the 
month of October, and once in November. The poet Cowper 
las some stanzas addressed ‘To the Nightingale, which the 
author heard sing on New Year’s Day, 1792.’ 
The nest of the Nightingale, which is almost always placed 
on the ground, in some natural hollow, amongst the roots 
of a tree, on a bank, or at the foot of a hedgerow, though 
sometimes two or three feet from the surface, is very loosely 
put together, and is formed of various materials, such as 
dried stalks of grasses, and leaves, small fibrous roots, and 
bits of bark, lined with a few hairs and the finer portions 
of the grass. It is about five inches and a half in external 
diameter, by about three internally, and about three and a 
half deep. 
Here again let me ‘enter a plaint’ in behalf of the bird 
and her nest. He who robs a Nightingale’s nest robs his 
neighbour, as well as the owner of it, and is guilty at once 
of burglary and petty larceny. Mr. Meyer observes, “The 
attachment of this species to its young, and its grief at 
their loss, have been noticed by many writers, ancient and 
modern. Our friend, the Rev. E. J. Moor, sends us, on this 
subject a memorandum from his journal: ‘one evening, while 
I was at college, he says, ‘happening to drink tea with the 
