Many times have we heard the round, full, lute-like plaintiveness of the nightingale, sounds that seem to seize and ingrain themselves in the very soul, that "make the wild blood start in its mystic springs." To us the delicious triumph of the bird's song lies in its utter _abandon_. The lute-like sweetness, the silvery liquidness, the bubbling and running over, and the wild, gurgling "jug, jug, jug!" To say this, and more--that the nightingale is a mad, sweet polyglot, that it is the sweetest of English warblers, the essence and quintessence of song, that it is the whole wild bird achievement in one--these are feeble, feeble! This "light-winged dryad of the trees" is still "in some melodious spot of beechen green and shadows numberless, singing of summer in full-throated ease," and here she will remain. Unlike the songs of some of our warblers, hers can never be reproduced. Attempt to translate it, and it eludes you, only its meagre skeleton remains. Isaac Walton, in his quaint eloquence, tries to say what he felt: "The nightingale, another of my airy creatures, breathes such sweet, loud music out of her little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind to think miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight ... should hear, as I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say, 'Lord, what music hast Thou provided for the saints in heaven, when Thou affordest bad men such music on earth!'" Although Britain can show no parallel either in number or brilliance to the living lights of the tropics, we are not without several interesting phosphorescent creatures of our own. Those whose business leads them abroad in the fields and woods through the short summer nights are often treated to quite remarkable luminous sights. Last night the writer was lying on a towering limestone escarpment, waiting to intercept a gang of poachers. The darkness was dead and unrelieved, and a warm rain studded every grass blade with moisture. When the day and sun broke, this would glow with a million brilliant prismatic colours, then suddenly vanish. But the illumination came sooner, and in a different way. The rain ceased, and hundreds of tiny living lights lit up the sward. In the intense darkness these shone with an unusual brilliancy, and lit up the almost impalpable moisture. Every foot of ground was studded with its star-like gem, and these twinkled and shone as the fireflies stirred in the grass. The sight was quite an un-English one, and the soft green glow only paled at the coming of day. One phase of this interesting phenomenon is that now we can have a reproduction of it nightly. The fireflies were collected, turned down on the lawn, and their hundred luminous lamps now shed a soft lustre over all the green.