THE MEADOWLARK. 23 
LAND is, by courtesy, said to belong to this person or that because he 
happens to hold a parchment whereupon are inscribed certain characters, a deed 
in legal phrase; but if the earth belongs to those who use it, and if he is a ben- 
efactor who causes two blades of grass to grow where was only one before, 
then, surely, the Meadow Lark has clear title of eminent domain. Fortunately, 
however, the claims of the farmer and the Lark do not conflict. The Lark asks 
but shelter, and if the man wants crops, lo! here is his most faithful servitor. 
It is difficult to overestimate the economic value of the Meadow Lark. The 
bird is by choice almost exclusively insectivorous. If, however, when hard 
pressed, he takes toll of the fallen wheat or clover seed, he is as easily justifiable 
as is the hired man who consumes the farmer’s biscuits that he may have the 
strength to wield the hoe against the farmer’s weeds. Being provided with a 
long and sensitive bill, the Meadow Lark not only gleans its insect prey from 
the surface of the ground, but works among the grass roots, and actually probes 
the earth in its search for wire- and cut-worms, those most dreaded pests. Be- 
sides devouring injurious grubs and insects of many kinds, the Lark has a great 
fondness for grasshoppers, subsisting almost entirely upon these in the season 
of their greatest abundance. In the matter of grasshopper consumption alone 
Meadow Larks of average distribution, are estimated by no less an authority 
than Professor Beal, to be worth about twenty-four dollars per month, per 
township, in saving the hay crop. ‘To the individual farmer this may seem a 
small matter, but in the aggregate the saving to the nation amounts to some 
hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. 
Even in winter, when a few individuals or occasional companies of Larks 
are still to be found, a large proportion of their food consists of hardy beetles 
and other insects, while weed-seed and scattering grain is laid under tribute, 
as it were, reluctantly. While not strictly resident to a large extent, the 
Meadow Lark is likely to occur almost anywhere in winter, and it arrives so 
early in February and March as to cause frequent confusion with the strict 
winter residents. Numbers of them also pass through our borders into Ontario. 
A certain raw day in early spring—March 18, 1889, it was—appeared re- 
markable for the number of Meadow Larks that were piled up on the Lake 
Erie shore; not dead, nor literally heaped up, indeed, but gathered thickly in 
the bordering meadows and bluff pasture lands because of the aspect of the 
Lake, which was so forbidding that the birds feared to cross it. In a walk 
of four or five miles, not tens nor hundreds, but thousands were seen, and 
they made a mighty and incessant chorus throughout the distance. Every 
now and then a bunch of forty or fifty birds would charge out over the lake, 
but always reconsidered the motion and beat back hastily to shore; and we 
saw none actually setting out upon the final passage. 
