Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/189



The illustration of the "coo" of the dove may not be uninteresting. It is not at all unmusical, but shows that the word generally used does little justice to the musical sound. Its laugh—which frightens other birds—is very amusing.

The nightingale shares with the lark the honours of poesy. Though sometimes dwelling for minutes on a strain composed of only two or three melancholy tones, beginning with a mezza voce, it swells gradually, by a most perfect crescendo, to the highest point of strength, and ends with a dying cadence. Sometimes a rapid succession of brilliant sounds terminates by detached ascending notes; while, again, as many as twenty-four different strains may be reckoned in one song of a fine nightingale.