THE NIGHTINGALE AND GUNFIRE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."3 SIR,—It is my fortune to live at the centre of a barrage arrange- ment, and when, as on Sunday night (May 19th), our German visitors fly overhead, one after the other, strung out at intervals, on their way to the Metropolis, my house becomes the centre of a converging fire of cannon to north, east, west, and south, all within a mile or two, and there is the most infernal noise you ever heard, and missiles whir about freely. Now, on Sunday, a nightingale was singing in a neighbouring elm before this began, and after it ended, quite an hour. At short intervals in the noise I heard him singing steadily on without a quaver. I have seen accounts of his relatives in France doing the same in the thick of a night's cannonading. Now, is this due to the rapture of the artist absorbed in his song, or is it pure insensibility, or is the nightin- gale quite deaf, so that, like Beethoven, he does not even hear his own music? I should like to know the opinion of any student of this bird. I noticed that the bats showed no such insensibility, being really mice. They were considerably fluttered and dashed about like an " alien bomb-dodger." But I have heard owls hoot- ing with their usual cheerfulness right through an air raid.—I
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