CHAP. 43.—THE NIGHTINGALE.
The song of the nightingale is to be heard, without intermission, for fifteen days and nights, continuously,
1 when the
foliage is thickening, as it bursts from the bud; a bird which
deserves our admiration in no slight degree. First of all,
what a powerful voice in so small a body! its note, how long,
and how well sustained! And then, too, it is the only bird
the notes of which are modulated in accordance with the strict
rules of musical science.
2 At one moment, as it sustains its
breath, it will prolong its note, and then at another, will vary
it with different inflexions; then, again, it will break into
distinct chirrups, or pour forth an endless series of roulades.
Then it will warble to itself, while taking breath, or else disguise its voice in an instant; while sometimes, again, it will
twitter to itself, now with a full note, now with a grave, now
again sharp, now with a broken note, and now with a prolonged
one. Sometimes, again, when it thinks fit, it will break
out into quavers, and will run through, in succession, alto,
tenor, and bass: in a word, in so tiny a throat is to be found
all the melody that the ingenuity of man has ever discovered
through the medium of the invention of the most exquisite
flute: so much so, that there can be no doubt it was an infallible presage of his future sweetness as a poet, when one of
these creatures perched and sang on the infant lips of the
poet Stesichorus.
That there may remain no doubt that there is a certain
degree of art in its performances, we may here remark that
every bird has a number of notes peculiar to itself; for they
do not, all of them, have the same, but each, certain melodies
of its own. They vie with one another, and the spirit
with which they contend is evident to all. The one that
is vanquished, often dies in the contest, and will rather yield
its life than its song. The younger birds are listening in the
meantime, and receive the lesson in song from which they
are to profit. The learner hearkens with the greatest attention,
and repeats what it has heard, and then they are silent by
turns; this is understood to be the correction of an error on the
part of the scholar, and a sort of reproof, as it were, on the
part of the teacher. Hence it is that nightingales fetch as
high a price as slaves, and, indeed, sometimes more than used
formerly to be paid for a man in a suit of armour.
I know that on one occasion six thousand sesterces
3 were
paid for a nightingale, a white one it is true, a thing that is
hardly ever to be seen, to be made a present of to Agrippina, the
wife of the Emperor Claudius. A nightingale has been often
seen that will sing at command, and take alternate parts with
the music that accompanies it; men, too, have been found who
could imitate its note with such exactness, that it would be
impossible to tell the difference, by merely putting water in a
reed held crosswise, and then blowing into it, a languette being
first inserted, for the purpose of breaking the sound and rendering it more shrill.
4 But these modulations, so clever and so
artistic, begin gradually to cease at the end of the fifteen days;
not that you can say, however, that the bird is either fatigued
or tired of singing; but, as the heat increases, its voice becomes
altogether changed, and possesses no longer either modulation or variety of note. Its colour, too, becomes changed, and
at last, throughout the winter, it totally disappears. The tongue
of the nightingale is not pointed at the tip, as in other birds.
It lays at the beginning of the spring, six eggs at the most.