nd love
and nest. They pass as far South as Shiraz, where they meet the plump
little Indian bulbul, which is often mistaken for the Shiraz poets'
singing-bird. The word is applied to both species in India and Persia,
but the birds are quite different in shape, plumage, and voice. They
meet at Shiraz, a place which possesses a climate so temperate and
equable as to bring together the birds and fruits of the East and West,
North and South; for there I saw and heard the Indian bulbul and the
hoopoe, the European nightingale, the cuckoo, and the magpie, and I know
that the fruits range from apples to dates.

The nightingale is the favourite pet singing-bird of the Persians. I had
good information regarding the manner of obtaining them for cage
purposes from some small boys who were engaged picking roses in a
rose-garden at Ujjatabod, near Yezd. There are two large rose-gardens in
that oasis in the Yezd Desert, where the manufacture of rose-water and
the attar essence is carried on. The gardens are appropriately favourite
haunts of the nightingales on their return with the season of gladness
from their winter resorts in the woods of the Caspian coast. The Persian
poets tell of the passionate love of the nightingale for the scented
rose, and in fanciful figure of speech make the full-blossomed flower
complain of too much kissing from its bird-lover, so that its sweetness
goes, and its beauty fades far too sadly soon. The boys told me of the
number of family pairs, their nests and eggs, and said that they took
the young male birds when fully fledged and about to leave the nest, and
brought them up by hand at first, till able to feed themselves. There is
a great demand in the towns for the young nightingales, which in Persia
sing well in captivity, so rarely the case with the bird in Europe. The
shopkeepers like to have their pet birds by them, and in the nesting
season they may be heard all over the bazaars, singing sweetly and
longingly for the partners they know of by instinct, but never meet.

There is much pleasing romance and sentiment in the popular idea
regarding the origin of the national emblem, Sher o Khurshed (the Lion
and the Sun). The following legend concerning it was told to me by the
Malik-ut-Tujjar, or Master of the Merchants of Tehran, a gentleman well
versed in Persian history, literature, and lore, and who spoke with all
the enthusiasm of national pride. When the first monarchy of Ajam
(Persia) was founded