Volume XVII of the “Encylopaedia Britannica” from 1884 contains a description of the nightingale that one would like to read aloud, it is so elegantly and lovingly formulated. There is talk of their enchanting singing and that poets since Aristophanes have tried to describe the effect of the sounds of the nightingale on the human soul. Some heard melancholy, but it is more likely that every person perceives the singing of the nightingale according to his inner condition and interprets it accordingly - hence the touching image of the poet bird, who with his swollen chest his lonely melody at any time of the night until early in the morning send out warm air, while in truth it is only doing what unmated male birds do before the arrival of the females: producing themselves.And much more in this way, narrated, not listed, from the nightingale's breeding grounds to their geographical distribution and their occurrence in literary works, for example in the sixth book of Ovid's "Metamorphoses".
Of course, Wikipedia provides a lot more hard facts. And photos anyway. You can hear the nightingale sing there too. Or you can watch three hours of nightingale sound (“no loop!”) On YouTube, everything works. It is also clear that not everyone has the 25 old leather volumes of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" at home, the worn leather of which crumbles a bit when you take it out, so you have to be careful with light-colored upholstered furniture. But something about the scholarly culture of the 19th century (Robert Louis Stevenson also contributed an entry to the ninth edition of the "Encyclopaedia", namely about the now forgotten French poet Jean Louis de Béranger) cannot be digitized, needs the spatial expansion of the 25 volumes, their massive weight. Something about it calls for stable tables, warm lamplight,a lot of time and a sense for the beauty of remote things that do not bring anything to anyone and are certainly not "current", but only remind us that human knowledge once came along in a perfect aesthetic form, which in turn was a special form of knowledge.
The above-mentioned entry "Nightingale" is marked by a certain AN. Behind the author abbreviation is Alfred Newton, the important Cambridge ornithologist, whose standard works are still on the shelves of British
birders
today read the venerable "Encyclopaedia Britannica" from back then, for example on eagles, buzzards, thrushes, owls, falcons, finches, flamingo, goose, vultures, hawks, crow, crane, cuckoo, seagull, pelican, peacock, penguin, swan, sparrow, woodpecker , Turkey, quail. Just for example.