Motions of Larks. 8 



bunch of rushes is the precise place ; but before you 

 get there the snipe is up again under your feet, ten 

 or fifteen yards closer than you supposed, having shot 

 along hidden by the banks, just above the water, out 

 of sight. 



Sometimes, after soaring to an unusual elevation, 

 the lark comes down, as it were, in one or two 

 stages : after dropping say fifty feet, the wings are 

 employed, and she shoots forward horizontally some 

 way, which checks the velocity. Repeating this 

 twice or more, she reaches the ground safely. In 

 rising up to sing she often traces a sweeping spiral 

 in the air at first, going round once or twice ; after 

 which, seeming to settle on the line she means to 

 ascend, she goes up almost perpendicularly in a 

 series of leaps, as it were pausing a moment to 

 gather impetus, and then shooting upwards till a 

 mere speck in the sky. When ten or twelve larks 

 are singing at once, all within a narrow radius a 

 thing that may be often witnessed from these downs 

 in the spring the charm of their vivacious notes is 

 greater than when one solitary bird alone discourses 

 sweet music which is lost in the blue dome overhead. 



At that time they seem to feed only a few minutes 

 consecutively, and then, as if seized with an uncon- 

 trollable impulse, rush up into the air to deliver a 

 brief song, descend, and repeat the process for 

 hours. They have a way, too, of rising but -six or 

 eight yards above the earth, spreading the wings 

 out and keeping them nearly still, floating slowly 

 forward, all the while uttering one sweet note softly. 

 The sward by the roadside appears to have a special 

 attraction for them ; they constantly come over from 



