[To TES EDITOR Or TIll SIB, With reference to the
corrections in your last two issues of your contributor's statement that the nightingale is never heard west of the Severn, be might have quoted the authority of Giraldus Cambrensis, who in his Itinerary through Wales ("Everyman Library "), describing the journey he took with Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, says:- " Some persons having remarked that the nightingale was never heard in this country [i.e., Wales], the Archbishop, with a signifi- cant smile, replied, 'The nightingale followed wise counsel, and never came into Wales ; but we, unwise counsel, who have penetrated and gone through it." (p. 117.)
Granted that the above is a statement of fact at that time, the evidence of the appearance of the nightingale at the present time is, I suppose, after seven hundred years, hardly good enough to have any hearing on the problem of its habitat.
—I am, Sir, do., B.
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