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. 



