ted 
The Skylark is protected all the year round in the counties of Exsex (part), London, 
Middlesex, and in the county boroughs of Kingston-upon-Hull, Middlesborough, South 
Shields, and Cardiff. 
VII. Remarks. 
There are still Larks at heaven’s gate singing! Judging by the ordinary laws of 
probability the English Skylark ought long ago to have gained the distinction that belongs 
to the Dodo and the Great Auk, for the Lark abides in the midst of foes. Day by day 
all through the winter the birdeatchers are at work to supply the demand for caged Larks. 
The birds caught by day form, however, but an inconsiderable proportion of the total number 
netted and trapped ; by far the greater mass of the birds that are sent in sackloads to all 
the great markets for table purposes, as well as the thousands that are sold alive, are taken 
at night while they are roosting on the ground. They are then caught by hundreds at a 
time, by means of nets dragged over the grass. The sale for these little birds is inconceivably 
large ; hundreds of thousands find their way yearly to the poultry markets; others are sold 
for the sake of their wing feathers, which are dyed to counterfeit those of tropical species ; 
and many live birds find purchasers among the lowest classes in great towns, who keep birds 
for the degrading practices of betting on their respective powers of song, and of letting them 
fly at shooting matches. 
It was stated in a London newspaper in March, 1891, that the London markets alone 
were at that time receiving more than forty thousand Larks daily, which arrived at Leaden- 
hall Market in sacks, and were sold to the poulterers by bushel measure. The number of 
Larks taken for the feather market and trade in live birds is probably as great. 
Tt is obvious that this cannot contimue indefinitely. Notwithstanding the extraordinary 
pertinacity with which birds continue to people a district which suits them, against many 
and great odds (in the case before us filling up thinned ranks with birds bred in the vast 
nurseries of Scandinavia), extermination must eventually follow such methods ; but there is 
still time to avoid such a catastrophe. There are still flocks of native Larks patrolling 
English fields, when their migrant brothers from far northern lands are dropped like 
feathers from the wings of the autumn wind; there are still English Larks building their 
round grassy nests and laying their four or five grey eggs in almost every English field. 
Let us consider, ere it be too late, if it be worth while to avert this threatened loss. It ig 
not from a sentimental point of view only that the question of protection for the birds must be 
approached, even by those who value them as one of nature’s best modes of expressing 
poetic thought and beauty, and something more that we can neither name nor fathom. 
Let this pass, therefore, and let us consider how the little creature that sings at heaven’s 
gate is hard at work at earth’s portal. 
The economic value of insectivorous birds is untold, and it is for its work in this direction 
