412 ALAUDID.E. 



aperture on one side for ingress and egress, thus endeavour- 

 ing to secure a continuance of tlie shelter previously sup- 

 plied by the long grass." Two or three instances are 

 recorded of the Sky Lark moving its eggs under the fear of 

 impending danger ; and Mr. Jesse, in the fourth edition of 

 his Gleanings, adds the following communication made to 

 him by a clergyman in Sussex, who during a previous harvest 

 " was riding gently towards Dell Quay, in Chichester Har- 

 bour, with two friends ; when having passed the toll-bar, the 

 road is of good elevation, and separated by a short quick-set 

 hedge on each side from the fields, over which there was a 

 commanding view. When in this situation, their attention 

 was attracted by a shrieking cry, and they discovered a pair 

 of Sky Larks rising out of the stubble ; and crossing the road 

 before them at a slow rate, one of them having a young bird 

 in its claws, which was dropped in the opposite field at a 

 height of about thirty feet from the ground, and killed by the 

 fall. On taking it up it appeared to have been hatched about 

 eight or nine days. The aflPectionate parent was endeavour- 

 ing to convey its young one to a place of safety, but its 

 strength failed in the attempt." 



Mr. W. P. Foster, surgeon, of Church-street, Hackney, 

 has for some years kept twelve or fifteen pairs of our smaller 

 singing birds together in an aviary, where they appear in 

 excellent health and plumage, repaying the care and attention 

 bestowed upon them by pursuing the round of their various 

 interesting habits, — the song, the courtship, the nest build- 

 ing, and feeding their young, within five or six feet of the 

 window, outside which the aviary is constructed, and through 

 which window, when open, many of them come into the room 

 to him. The degree of perfection with which they are ma- 

 naged, and the total absence of any influence of fear or re- 

 straint on their habits, may be learned by the fact that in the 

 summer of 1886, a pair of Sky Larks produced four sets of 



