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 our 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 us to pass the winter in the North of Africa and Syria. Its visits to this country 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. Nightingales 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. The Nightingale is the most celebrated of all the feathered race for its song. The poets have in all ages made it the theme of their verses; some of these we cannot resist giving: “The Nightingale, as soon as April bringeth Unto her rested sense a perfect waking, Which late bare earth, proud of new clothing, springeth, Sings out her woes----.” SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. “---- ---- ---- Beast and bird, They to their grassy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk; all but the wakeful Nightingale; She all night long her amorous descant sung.” MILTON. “And in the violet-embroidered vale, Where the lovelorn Nightingale Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well.” MILTON. “O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still, Thou with fresh hope the lover’s heart dost fill, While the jolly hours lead on propitious May, Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day, First heard before the shallow cuckoo’s bill, Portend success in love. Oh, if Jove’s will Have linked that amorous power to thy soft lay, Now timely sing, ere the rude bird of hate Foretell my hopeless doom in some grove nigh; As thou from year to year hast sung too late For my relief, yet hadst no reason why: Whether the muse, or love, call thee his mate, Both them I serve, and of their train am I.” MILTON. “---- ---- Now is the pleasant time, The cool, the silent, save where silence yields, To the night-warbling bird, that, now awake, Tunes sweetest his love-laboured song.” MILTON.