94 
I could not say how many nests we found on this occasion, but 
I recollect taking two young Tawny Owls home, and was uncere- 
moniously ordered out of the house with them. On our return we 
passed through the village of Cotehill, and in the window of a 
small shop we saw some of Carr’s biscuits; the total amount of 
cash amongst the lot of us amounted to the sum of one penny. 
One was deputed to go in and purchase two of the biscuits, but 
they had apparently weathered in the aforesaid window for many 
weeks, and in spite of our young teeth, we had to break them with 
a stone and divide the fragments. 
Boys, when young, have unbounded stomachs. Many a day 
have we spent in the country with nothing to eat but what we 
culled on the way—ears of wheat, hips and haws, cherries, straw- 
berries, brambles, crabs, wild raspberries, sloes, nuts, the austere 
fruit of the bird cherry, which we used to call “ heck berries,” and 
finish up with a raw turnip for dessert. At that time we could 
wander at cur own sweet will over places where now it would be 
treason to enter. Freedom to the naturalist is being curtailed 
every year, and I am afraid at last it will amount to observing on 
the road sides. <A few years after, in going past the Cringles one 
lovely night in June, we heard a bird singing suspended in the air. 
We could not discern it, owing to the darkness, but its rich, 
melodious, flute-like song, with its different modulations, quite 
different from the Skylark’s notes, arrested our notice. We 
listened to it for a considerable time, and it was years after before 
we made out the charming songster, and when we did so it was in 
rather a curious way. When walking through Pontefract, there 
was a cage hanging outside the window of a small cottage, and the 
bird started to sing the same identical song which had puzzled us 
years before. We turned back, and had a good look at the 
imprisoned minstrel, and had no difficulty in making it out to be | 
the Woodlark, a bird that I have not heard in this part of the 
district since ; although, on two occasions, I listened to the same 
notes in the south-west of Cumberland. 
Many foolish and dangerous escapades have we had. Whena 
lad, we borrowed an old cart rope from a shed near to Scalesceugh, 
