508 LARK 
not a tithe of the numbers previously present. On the approach 
of severe weather, in one part of the country or another, flocks 
arrive, undoubtedly from the Continent, which in magnitude cast 
into insignificance all those that have hitherto inhabited the 
district. On the east coast of both Scotland and England this 
immigration has been several times noticed as occurring in a 
constant stream for as many as three days in succession. Further 
inland the birds are observed “in numbers simply incalculable,” 
and “in countless hundreds.” On such occasions the bird-catchers 
are busily at work with their nets or snares, so that 20,000 or 
30,000 Larks are often sent together to the London market, and at 
the lowest estimate £2000 worth are annually sold there. During 
the winter of 1867-68, 1,255,500 Larks, valued at £2260, were 
taken into the town of Dieppe. The same thing happens in 
various places almost every year, and many persons are apt to 
believe that thereby the species is threatened with extinction. 
When, however, it is considered that, if these birds were left to 
continue their wanderings, a large proportion would die of hunger 
before reaching a place that would supply them with food, and 
that of the remainder an enormous proportion would perish at sea 
in their vain attempt to find a settlement, it must be acknowledged 
that man by his wholesale massacres, which at first seem so brutal, 
is but anticipating the act of Nature, and on the whole probably 
the fate of the Larks at his hands is not worse than that which 
they would encounter did not his devices intervene. 
The Skylark’s range extends across the Old World from the 
Feroes to the Kurile Islands. In winter it occurs in North China, 
Nepal, the Punjab, Persia, Palestine, Lower Egypt, and Barbary. 
SkyLarks—<Alauda agrestis and A. arvensis. (From Dresser.) 
It sometimes strays to Madeira, and has been killed in Bermuda, 
though its unassisted appearance there is doubtful. It has been 
1 See Yarrell (Hist. Br. Birds, ed. 4, i. pp. 618-621), where particular refer- 
ences to the above statements, and some others, are given. 
