There have been various attempts to introduce the nightingale into such parts of this country as it has not yet frequented; for instance, a gentleman of Gower, a sea-side district of Glamorganshire, the climate of which is remarkably mild, procured a number of young birds from Norfolk and Surrey, hoping that they would find themselves so much at home in the beautiful woods there as to return the following year. But none came. Again, as regards Scotland, Sir John Sinclair purchased a large number of nightingales’ eggs, at a shilling each, and employed several men to place them carefully in robins’ nests to be hatched. So far all succeeded well. The foster-mothers reared the nightingales, which, when full-fledged, flew about as if quite at home. But when September came, the usual month for the migration of the nightingale, the mysterious impulse awoke in the hearts of the young strangers, and, obeying it, they suddenly disappeared and never after returned. Mr. Harrison Weir has given us a very accurate drawing of the nightingale’s nest, which is slight and somewhat fragile in construction, made of withered leaves—mostly of oak—and lined with dry grass. The author of “British Birds” describes one in his possession as composed of slips of the inner bark of willow, mixed with the leaves of the lime and the elm, lined with fibrous roots, grass, and a few hairs; but whatever the materials used may be, the effect produced is exactly the same. In concluding our little chapter on this bird, I would mention that in the Turkish cemeteries, which, from the old custom of planting a cypress at the head and foot of every grave, have now become cypress woods, nightingales abound, it having been also an old custom of love to keep these birds on every grave. CHAPTER VII. THE SKYLARK. The Skylark, that beautiful singer, which carries its joy up to the very gates of heaven, as it were, has inspired more poets to sing about it than any other bird living. Wordsworth says, as in an ecstasy of delight:— Up with me! up with me into the clouds! For thy song, lark, is strong; Up with me! up with me into the clouds! Singing, singing. With clouds and sky about me ringing, Lift me, guide me till I find That spot that seems so to my mind. Shelley, in an ode which expresses the bird’s ecstasy of song, also thus addresses it, in a strain of sadness peculiar to himself:— Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird, thou never wert— That from heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art! Higher, still, and higher From the earth thou springest, Like a cloud of fire; The deep blue thou wingest, And singing still doth soar, and soaring ever singest! * * * * *