psalm or hymn ; in due time the poet and singer bethinks him of his annual feast 

 of flesh, and his spiritual appreciation grows thin. 



We are thankful, in spite of all this, that the poets and singers sing on. They 

 have immortalized the skylark of Europe as no other known bird is immortalized. 



Superstition claims the bird as peculiarly its own. Do not its prophets divine 

 things mysterious and darkly subtle by the skyward flight of the bird? And its 

 song! Any priest of the craft may read in its varying notes all sorts of fortunes 

 to people and clans. 



And the eggs of the skylark ! Were they not speckled and streaked by pass- 

 ing night winds in the shape of fairies with garden gourds filled with the ink 

 juice of the deadly night-shade berries? Were the skylark's eggs white they 

 would be "moon-struck," and the hatchlings would sing the song of the night- 

 owl. In spite of the speckled eggs and the usual grassy cover of the nest, these 

 are too often the successful object of the prowling boy. Though it must be con- 

 fessed that in this, as in the case of the robbery of other birds, it is not always 

 the original finder of the nest who is guilty of theft. Shakespeare was aware of 

 this fact, for in "Much Ado About Nothing" he makes Benedick speak of "the 

 flat transgression of a school boy, who, being overjoyed with finding a bird's nest, 

 shows it to his companion, and Jic steals it." 



The mistake was in "showing it his companion." Though, should the com- 

 panion happen to be a girl, he need have no fear. The nest will be undisturbed 

 next time he visits the spot. 



For eight months of the English year does the skylark sing, prodding the lazy, 

 comforting the sorrowful, accusing the guilty, making more merry the glad. On 

 account of its ever-circling upward flight, the bird is believed to hold converse with 

 heaven. In capacity it is supposed to be "longing for the sky" when it flings itself 

 against the roof of its cage. To protect it against harm in this last, soft cloth is 

 sometimes used for the cover to its home. 



In winter, when the skylarks cover the sandy plains of Great Britain, they 

 have but a single cry, having laid by their songs with which to "wake the spring" ; 

 or it may be with them as in the case of our bobolinks — after a diet of ripe grains 

 they are "too full for utterance." But when spring is actually astir, then are 

 the larks abroad in the sky. Francis Rabelais, as long ago as the fourteenth 

 century, loved the English spring for the sake of the skylark, and the thoughts 

 the bird inspired in him. Having no appetite, apparently, for the bird when he 

 is fattened for eating, the poet longed for larks in the act of singing, as if, could 

 he hold one oi them in his hand when it was articulating, he might come by its 

 written song, as the telegrapher reads the scroll as it unwinds. But he wouldn't 

 be content with one bird, oh, no ! — if ever the "skies should fall" he made up his 

 mind to "catch larks" by the basketfuls. But the heavens never were known to 



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