That crowds and hurries and precipitates
With fast thick warble his delicious notes,
As he were fearful that au April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His love chaunt, and disburthen his full soul
Of all its music! *

*

Far and near

In wood and thicket over the wide grove
They answer and provoke each other's songs,
With skirmish and capricious passagings,
And murmurs musical, and swift jug, jug,
And one low piping sound more sweet than all,
Stirring the air with such an harmony,

That should you close your eyes you might almost
Forget it was not day *."

Chaucer, too, in his poem of the Flower and Leaf, says

"The nightingale with so mery a note

Answered him, that all the wood yrong, &c."

But it may be doubted if the epithet merry here is to be taken exactly in the modern sense, any more than it is in the old expression "My merry men," in the address of a chief to his followers, or in the common phrase Merry England, where it appears to mean rather renowned or famous, than that we now call merry. Dryden, in his paraphrase of the Flower and Leaf, renders the above lines;

"The nightingale replied;

So sweet, so shrill, so variously she sung,

That the grove echoed and the valleys rung."

Considering this song merely as a piece of music, there can be no doubt that both the views that have thus been taken of it by the poets may be supported, though the following description, by the Abbé La Pluche, is nearer the truth than either. "The nightingale," he says, "passes from grave to gay; from a simple song to a warble the most varied; *The Nightingale, written in April 1798.

which we have met is given by Bontius, a Dutch physician, who resided in Java, and published some excellent works on the natural history and diseases of the East. "On the sea-coast," says he, "of the kingdom of China, a sort of small parti-coloured birds, of the shape of swallows, at a certain season of the year, namely, their breeding time, come out of the midland country to the rocks; and from the foam or froth of the sea-water dashing and breaking against the bottom of the rocks, gather a certain clammy, glutinous matter, perchance the sperm of whales or other fishes, of which they build their nests wherein they lay their eggs and hatch their young. These nests the Chinese pluck from the rocks and bring them in great numbers into the East Indies to sell; which are esteemed by gluttons great delicacies, who dissolving them in chicken or mutton broth are very fond of them, preferring them far before oysters, mushrooms, or other dainty and liquorish morsels *" About the same period they were tolerably described by Olaus Wormius †, and John de Laet ‡, who justly remarks that their substance resembles isinglass, But, long before this, these nests were known to Hierax, the Cappadocian, to Andromachus, the physician to the Emperor Nero, and, as we learn from Galen, to Asclepiades, who lived in the time of Pompey. All these ancients, however, employed them only as a medicine; and the celebrated Redi says, "I do not remember to have ever read or heard that they were used as food, and I therefore am of opinion that we owe this ingenious invention solely to the epicurism of the later ages, which, always hungering after novelty, sets an adventitious value upon what is

Bontius, India Orientalis, p. 66. + Museum Wormianum, iii. 21. Epist. ad. Worm.

brought from a distance and difficult to be procured *." Redi has subjoined two tolerable figures of the nests, and likewise mentions their resemblance to isinglass; but he has no faith in their medical virtues.

Kircher, Du Halde, and others candidly confess that the substance composing the nests is unknown; while others deal in theoretical conjectures. Some seem to suppose they are made of shells, describing them as marked like these with ridges and rugosities, and consisting of numerous cells as if a number of shells had been conglutinated together t. Others say they are composed of sea foam or of the juice of a tree called calambouc. Kæmpfer again tells us he was assured by the Chinese fishers that the nests are an artificial production, at least those usually sold being nothing but a preparation of marine polypit, as isinglass is the dried swim-bladder of the sturgeon (Accipenser Huso, and A. Ruthenus).

M. Montbeillard, anxious to clear up the mystery, applied to M. Poivre, an intelligent philosophical traveller who had visited the places where these nests are built. The following is his account of the matter. "In 1741," says M. Poivre, "I embarked in the ship Mars, bound for China, and in the month of July, the same year, we reached the Straits of Sunda, very near Java, and between two small islets called the Great and Little Tocque. We were there becalmed, and went ashore on Little Tocque to hunt green pigeons. While the rest of the party were clambering among the precipices, I walked along the beach to gather shells and jointed corals, which are found here in great abundance. After having made almost an entire circuit of the islet, it was growing late,

* Redi, Experimenta circa Res. Nat. p. 132, ed. Amstel. 1685; and Coll. Acad. iv. p. 567. Hist. de Japan, i. 110.

† Marin, Hist. de la Chine, p. 42.

when a sailor who accompanied me, discovering a deep cavern in the rocks on the brink of the sea, went into it, and scarcely advanced two or three steps when he called aloud to me. I hastened to the mouth of the cavern, and found it darkened by an immense cloud of small birds, which poured out like swarms. I entered it, and knocked down with my cane many of these poor little birds, with which I was then unacquainted; as I penetrated farther I perceived the roof of the cavern to be covered entirely with small nests shaped like holy-water pots. Each of these nests contained two or three eggs or young ones, which lay softly on feathers, like those which the parents had' on their breast. As these nests soften in water, they could not withstand rain, or bear an exposure near the surface of the sea. The sailor had already broken off several, and had filled his frock with them and with birds. I also detached some of the nests, and found them glued firmly to the rocks. Night.now, came on, and we returned to the ship with the fruits of our excursion. The nests which we brought were known by many of our people on board, who had made several voyages to China, to be the same with those so highly valued in that country. The sailor kept several pounds, which he sold to good account at Canton. For my part, I delineated and coloured these birds, with their nests and their young; and I discovered them to be real swallows; they were about the size of the larger kind of humming-birds (Trochilide, VIGORS). Since that time I have observed, in several voyages,, that in the months of March and April the seas which extend from Java to Cochin-China, and from the promontory of Sumatra to New Genoa, are covered with fishespawn, which floats on the water like strong glue half melted. I have learnt from the Malays, the Cochin-Chinese, and from the natives of

the Philippines and Moluccas, that this is the substance of which the salangane constructs its nest. It gathers the spawn either by skimming the surface of the sea, or by alighting on the rocks on which it is cast coagulated. Sometimes threads of this viscous substance are seen hanging at the bills of these birds, and which have been supposed, but without foundation, to be extracted from their stomach in the breeding season. They all agree in this account. On passing the Moluccas in April, and the Straits of Sunda in March, I fished up some of this spawn with a bucket, and, after having drained off the water and dried it, I found it resembled exactly the substance of those nests. About the end of July and the beginning of August it is customary with the people of