country in autumn: it returned to the same place the following spring, where I recognised it by its bad song; and it remained in the neighbourhood all the summer, and bred up a nest of young ones." From this, I think we may fairly infer that the song of a Nightingale is formed during the first winter, and cannot be improved afterwards.

Some female birds occasionally sing.—Mr. Sweet continues—“ A female that I had also been keeping for six years, to see if she would breed, I also turned out along with him; but whether she came back and was partner in the nest, I cannot say, as I had no mark to know her by. This female I kept four years, and it never attempted to sing; the fifth year it sang frequently, a pretty, soft, Nightingale's note. I have found this to be the case with several female birds; they do not sing till they become aged: but it is not an unexceptionable rule, as I have had a female Willow Wren that sang when quite young." The Nightingale quits the nest very early (as is the case with most other ground-building birds), and both sexes warble to themselves, even before their tails have grown to the full length. The young females generally continue to do this, but in a weaker and more unconnected way than the young males, till the following spring, when they gradually leave off recording, as this sort of singing is termed, by amateurs.

Longevity.-M. Bechstein observes of the male Nightingale, in confinement, that "after they have reached six years, they begin to sing less frequently and long, with less brilliancy and ornament. "It is then," he continues, 66 better to set them at liberty, in the month of May. The open air often invigorates them so much, that they regain their song, in all its force and beauty." I question very much, however, how M. Bechstein contrived to identify his birds; for, in my opinion, a caged Nightingale set at liberty, in the month of May, would, to a certainty, proceed northward; and the alteration in the song, it will be noticed, tends rather to corroborate this view of the subject. The same author asserts that a Nightingale may, by proper management, be kept in confinement fifteen years; and he mentions one instance of an individual having attained the age of twenty-five years, in captivity.

Food. The food of the Nightingale consists almost entirely of insects and their larvæ, and, towards the end of the season, they eat elder-berries, and sometimes currants, which, like Robins, they swallow whole; but they never attack larger fruit, nor will they touch it in confinement, if placed in the cage. Their subsistence is chiefly sought for upon the ground, where they devour a considera

one.

ble number of the grubs of beetles, which they find among the decayed leaves; also, large moths and ground spiders, together with the smaller ground beetles; and they are fond of most species of smooth caterpillars, though some they refuse (as that of the common magpie moth, Abraxas glossulariata); as also every sort of hairy Small earth-worms, too, they will readily feed on in the wild state, and, in pursuit of them, are easily attracted by turning up a little ground; but, like the Robin, they will very seldom touch these in confinement, which would imply that they only resorted to them in default of finding food more to their taste. In confinement, their most favourite morsel is a house spider, or the grub of a beetle; and they are greedily fond of large-bodied moths, which latter, after knocking about and beating off the wings, they swallow whole. They always snap instantly at every fly that comes within the precincts of their cage.

Distribution. This bird is rather partially distributed over the country, being only found upon the chalky, gravelly, sandy, and, sometimes, upon the clayey, soils; frequenting the richer wooded districts, more particularly when these fringe the banks of rivulets or canals; not that it affects watery situations, like the Reedlings, (or aquatic warblers), for it is found at every distance from them, but is merely attracted by their greater luxuriance of vegetation. It avoids alike both the rocky country and the fen, and though abounding in the woods, shrubberies, and along large double hedges, in the south-eastern counties, it is rarely found so far west as Devonshire, or to the northward of Doncaster, in Yorkshire; although on the continent, it is said to occur plentifully in Sweden, and in the northern parts of Germany.

May be influenced, in some degree, by peculiarities of food.—The cause of this restriction has always been considered obscure; and not improbably it is, in some instances, complex. Montagu observed that the young were chiefly fed upon a kind of small, green caterpillar (perhaps, as Selby remarks, that of a Tenthredo), but he does not particularize the species: and it is possible that these may feed only upon some plant, which is limited to certain soils or situations, or which, at most, may occur only upon particular sedimentary strata. We want, however, some further observation on this subject, in different and distant localities wherein the bird is found; the which, at any rate, might tend to elucidate any minor and local difficulties that may occur anywhere concerning its partial range, and would, probably enough, furnish the clue towards explaining, at once, why any districts are

avoided, which may be situate within the general boundaries of its summer distribution.

It is not, as some have supposed, confined to the localities where the cowslip grows.—It has indeed been suggested, that the Nightingale may possibly not be found in any part but where cowslips grow plentifully; and, with respect to Devonshire and Cornwall, this coincidence is, as Montagu observes, just, but fails in certain localities near London, where (as in the extensive woods of Norwood and Dulwich) this bird is extremely plentiful, but the cowslip is not found; while, on the other hand, in the vicinity of York, where cowslips are, I am told, plentiful in the extreme, the Nightingale never visits; so that there is evidently no connexion in the matter, which indeed might have been expected, prima facie, the one being a bird of the woods, and the other, properly, a plant of the open meadow.

Appears to migrate almost due north or south.-There may probably be some suitable districts from which this bird is excluded, on account of the route which leads to them being, perhaps, cut off by a mountain or other impediment, while a fertile tract of country, on either side, tends further to make them diverge from a direct course. Others, as the wooded vallies of Devonshire, Wales, Ireland, and the greater part of Scotland, are unquestionably situate beyond their regular line of migration: for I am prepared to shew (at least so far as all the data I have been able to collect will bear me out) that, in its migrative flights, the Nightingale hardly deviates from a meridian; which, being conceded, together with the fact that it everywhere avoids both the rocky and the marshy lands, it will be found that all the seeming anomalies, as yet recorded, displayed throughout the whole extent of the Nightingale's apparently partial summer range, may be satisfactorily accounted for. We have now only to discover what peculiarity of food excludes it from those sylvan districts which are situate over the rocks of igneous, or (as some term them) primary, formation.

Supposed route of most of the summer birds of passage.—The following will, I think, appear to be, in all probability, the common route of the Nightingale, and, indeed, of the great majority of the short-winged summer birds of passage which visit the British islands. They would seem, in the first instance, to cross from Africa into Spain, to pass chiefly through the eastern provinces of that kingdom (being kept in this direction by the continuous moun. tain chains, which, for the most part, run north-east and southwest); then to penetrate through France, having surmounted some

of the passes of the Pyrenees, and many, perhaps, coasting along just to the interior of the shores of the Bay of Biscay; these latter continuing their course overland, from about Rochelle, till they arrive at the channel, which, in consequence, they must cross, chiefly at its narrower, or eastern limits; being even on this account less likely, when making for our shores, to be borne away by adverse winds, and distributed much to the westward of the point from which they took their departure, than those species which are more discursive in their seasonal journeys, and of which many indi viduals appear to cross from the westernmost extremity of Brittany. Admitting, then, this to be the route of the Nightingales which traverse the eastern parts of Spain, and that, as appears most probable, these deviate but a very little indeed, either to the right or left, we are by no means surprised to find that this bird is unknown in Le Bugey, and other districts of the south-east of France, and we are prepared to hear of its not occurring in the west of Brittany, and (excepting as an occasional straggler) to the westward of at most the third degree of longitude in the British islands. It is to be regretted that good local continental faunas are, at present, so rare, and difficult of access, and that, accordingly, we have as yet so very few data for determining, in a satisfactory manner, the exact routes, and consequently the precise geographical range, of our numerous migratory birds.

General distribution of the summer migrant birds over the British islands. We are not, however, by any means, hence to infer, of all the species, that their migrations take place so nearly in a meridional line as those of the Nightingale; for some of them, as many of the Warblers, appear to follow, pretty closely, the course of rivers, along the different vallies; while others, as the common Wheatear, seem everywhere to frequent more the upland grounds, each pursuing, thus, the range of its particular haunts, so long as this does not too much interfere with its direct route. Of their general distribution in our own islands, I think it probable (as we have already seen) that by far the greater number cross over at the narrower portion of the British channel; and that, afterwards, when arrived upon our shores, the less discursive kinds (indeed, the majority of them all) continue their course northward, rather than disperse towards the west; so that all are commonest in the south eastern counties, while a few species hardly visit at all, or very sparingly, the extreme west of England, and the south of Ireland: those, indeed, that do, being in all probability the individuals that had crossed over from Brittany, a district which I more than suspect is never,

or but very partially, if at all, towards the eastward, visited by the Nightingale. I can at least state confidently, from inquiries on the spot, that this bird is quite unknown in the Channel islands, Jersey, Guernsey, &c.; which are, besides, of a geological structure adverse to its taking up in them its abode.

Range of the Nightingale over Europe.-Nightingales have been observed, by Sonnini and others, to winter, in considerable numbers, in the thickets of the Egyptian delta; and we consequently find them, in summer, distributed over most suitable districts of the east of Europe, and part of Asia. Those that visit Germany probably ascend by Sicily and the Italian peninsula, and not a few, perhaps, along Sardinia and Corsica; some of which latter, arriving on the western shore of the gulf of Genoa, may be those which visit above Nantua, in France, to the south of which town they are said not to be found. Many species of migratory birds, also, disperse themselves over Spain (that is to say, over the central and western provinces of that peninsula), apparently surmounting, or perhaps arriving to the westward of, those obstacles which had caused others to deviate a little to the eastward; and it is highly probable that no inconsiderable number which attempt annually to wing their way over the turbulent Bay of Biscay, perish in the Atlantic; the weary, exhausted state of the different Swallows, which were noticed, by Mr. Couch, to arrive on our Cornish coast, indicating how fatiguing and severe a journey this had proved, even to them; for there can be no doubt that these had accomplished it, as also the Alpine Swifts which have been observed in Ireland. This opinion is, indeed, considerably strengthened by the fact, of two or three species of short-winged migratory birds being almost peculiar to Spain and Portugal.

Small birds require a favorable gale of wind, to enable them to traverse a wide extent of sea.—In this little essay, in order to explain satisfactorily whatever I may have occasion to advance, it will be as well, perhaps, to adduce, as I proceed, some authorities by way of corroboration. To those persons who may not have attended much to the facts concerning the migratory journeys of birds, a variety of apparent contradictions arise continually; and I may be reasonably asked that, while Fieldfares, and Redwings, and even tiny Goldcrests, are known to arrive, by thousands, upon our shores, having evidently winged their way across from the Scandinavian peninsula, how is it that even the rapid and powerfully-winged Swallow tribes, are but just able to reach England from the northern coast of Spain? while again, on the other hand, we find in