These birds have a sort of vibratory motion, and raise and depress their body by turns ; and they oscillate the tail upwards and downwards. As the ancients believed that they passed the night in singing, so they alleged that they never slept, that their flesh had a soporific quality, but that the heart and eyes laid under a person's head would keep hint awake. On these erroneous surmises, the nightingale became the emblem of vigilance; but the moderns, who have observed with greater accuracy, have found that, in the season of love, it sleeps during the day, and even dreams. On their first arrival in the provinces of Europe, these birds affect the bottoms of hedges and inclosures, which are calculated to afford them at once concealment, protection from the cold, and insect food; but as soon as the forests begin to assume their verdure, they retire into the thickest recesses, and take up their re sidence under the covert of a hill, or in the neighbour hood of a brook, or of an echo, with the reverberation of which they appear to be delighted. The male selects two or three favourite trees, from which he loves to pour forth his lays, in the most perfect style, particularly from that which is nearest to the nest. When once coupled, he al lows none of his fellows to intrude on his chosen domain. The extent of the latter is regulated by the quantity of subsistence requisite for the family ; for it has been ob served, that in those situations in which food abounds, the intervals between the nests are much more limited. Fierce and deadly contests sometimes ensue for the possession of the females; and it has been repeatedly asserted, that the males greatly exceed the other sex in number,---a position from which Colonel Montagu is strongly inclined to dis sent; but as the males arrive about ten days sooner than the females, and consequently none but males are caught at first, he supposes that this circumstance suggested the notion of the disparity. Each couple work at the con struction of their respective nest, which, after all, is so loosely put together, as scarcely to bear transporting from one place to another. The external materials employed, are quantities of coarse grass and dried leaves of the oak, and the lining consists of hair, fibrous roots, down, or other soft substances. It is usually placed near the ground, in bushes, at the foot of a hedge, or of a row of horn beams, or on the undermost branches of some tufted shrub. Hence the the young, and sometimes the mother, are known to fall a sacrifice to dogs, foxes, pole cats, weasels, &c. The hatch generally consists of from four to six eggs, of an olivaceous green. In this country, there is seldom more than one brood in the ear, and in France seldom more than two, unless some accident be fals the first. The female, though a close and ardent sit ter, is said to be sometimes relieved by the male. From. the moment that the young are hatched, both parents at tend them with much assiduity; but it is a mistake to suppose, that, like the canaries, they disgorge for them, in the form of pellets, the food which they had previously swallowed; for, having no crop, they merely stuff their bill to the esophagus, with young worms, smooth cater pillars, and the larvae of ants, and of other insects, which they share, in equal portions, among the brood; or, if abundance of food be near at hand, they are contented to fetch it at the end of their bill, as they do in aviaries. The young are fledged in less than a fortnight, and quit the nest before they are capable of flight, hopping after their parents from twig to twig; but from the moment that they can use their wings, the male alone takes charge of them, and the female prepares the nest for a second hatch. As soon as the young come forth from the shell, the male ceases his song, which he seldom resumes during the se cond breeding; but if, by accident, his female is taken from him, or killed before the accomplishment of the first hatch, he is again musical, and will continue to sing very late in the summer, or till he finds another mate. Both parents, however, have a clamorous note of anxiety and alarm, which they frequently repeat, especially if danger threatens the nest, and which serves as a signal to the young to remain silent and motionless. About the end of August, or even sooner, if their stock of provisions begin to fail, both old and young resort to the hedges, orchards, newly turned up fields, &c. where they find more abun dant fare, and add to their ordinary diet elder berries and other soft fruits, on which they fatten. In some countries they are then snared, and reckoned as dainty as ortolans.
The nightingale, we need scarcely observe, excels all birds in the softness and mellowness, as well as in the duration of its warble. Though heard to most advantage in the stillness of a fine evening, it also sings in the day time, but its tones are then blended with those of the other choristers of the grove, and, consequently, not so readily distinguished. Mr. John Hunter discovered that the muscles of the larynx are stronger in this than in other species of birds, and that they are strongest in the male, which is the principal songster. The Hon. Daines Barrington, who kept a very fine nightingale for three years, and bestowed particular attention on its musical faculties and exertions, ascertained, that the sound of its song filled the circle of an English mile in which is equal to the power of the human voice. When it sang round, in its entire compass, he remarked sixteen different begin nings and closes, at the same time that the intermediate notes were commonly varied in their succession with so much judgment, as to produce the most pleasing variety. It would sometimes continue its warble for twenty seconds without a pause ; but whenever respiration became neces sary, it was taken as skilfully as by an opera singer. Kir cher and Barrington both attempted to note the nightin gale's song in technical form; but, although the notes were played by an excellent performer on the flute, they bore no resemblance to the native warble of the bird, owing, as Mr. Barrington conjectured, to the impossibility of marking the musical intervals; for the measures are so varied, the transitions so insensibly blended, and the suc cession of tones so wild and irregular, as to soar beyond the fetters of method. These birds, however, differ very much in regard to the quality of their song ; for, in some, it is so indifferent, that they are not reckoned worth keeping, and it is even pretended that their warble is not the same in every district. '['he bird-fanciers in England, for ex ample, prefer the nightingales of Surrey to those of Mid dlesex, as they give a preference to the chaffinches of Es sex, and the goldfinches of Kent. At times, even a fe male has been heard to sing, though less powerfully than the male, a circumstance which may rescue Virgil and Milton from the criticism of having improperly attribut ed to her the prerogative of the other sex. That the male nightingale is naturally endowed with a decided mu sical propensity, cannot be questioned, and might be exemplified by many anecdotes; but we shall cite only the following: Bartolomeo Ricci, in a letter to Giamba tista Pigna, when describing the readiness with which Silvio Antoniano acted the part of and improvisatore, and accompanied his verses with the lyre, relates, that a night ingale, attracted by his music, took its station at no great distance, answered with its notes to the lyre, and seemed to contend with the poet in the song. Silvio no sooner perceived this than he changed his theme, and celebrated the praises of the nightingale. The Rev. Dr. Black, author of the Life of Tasso, conjectures, that this incident may have suggested the contest of the lyrist and the nightingale, in the beautiful poem, in which Strada, in his Prolusions, professes to imitate Claudian. " An in telligent Persian," (says the late Sir William Jones, in his Dissertation on the Musical Modes of the Hindus,) " declared he had more than once been present, when a celebrated lutanist, surnamed Bulbul, (the nightingale,) was playing to a large company in a grove near Schiraz, where he distinctly saw the nightingales trying to vie with the musician; sometimes warbling on the trees, some times fluttering from branch to branch, as if they wished to approach the instrument, and at length dropping on the ground in a kind of ecstasy, from which they were soon raised, he assured me, by a change in the mode." When M. Gerardin happened to saunter in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, one fine evening of spring, his ear was regaled with the melodious accents of two nightingales. He instantly returned the compliment by some passages of tender airs, on the German flute, when his feathered musicians approached him first in silence, but, after list ening for a while, they sung in unison to his instrument, and soon surpassed its powers. On raising his key, first one third, and subsequently a whole octave, they shrunk not from the challenge, and acquitted themselves in such a style, as, by M. Gerardin's own confession, to merit the palm of victory.