240 LAND-BIRDS AND GAME-BIRDS 



" The pale purple even 



" Melts around thy flight; 

 " Like a star of heaven 



" In the broad daylight 

 " Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight." 



" Teach me half the gladness 



" That thy brain must know, 

 " Such harmonious madness 



"From my lips would flow 

 " The world should listen then, as I am listening now 1 " 



The last stanza of Wordsworth's ode to the Sky Lark is also 

 very fine : 



'Leave to the nightingale her shady wood; 



' A privacy of glorious light is thine, 



' Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood 



' Of harmony, with instinct more divine; 



'Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam 



' True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home." 



NOTE. "The famed Skylark of the Old World" (Alauda 

 arvensis), says Dr. Brewer, " can rest on a twofold claim to be 

 included in a complete list of North American birds. One of 

 these is their occasional occurrence in the Bermudas, and in 

 Greenland. The other is their probably successful introduc- 

 tion near New York." 



(a). Nearly eight inches long. Above, grayish-brown ; be- 

 neath, white, or buff-tinged ; above and below, much streaked 

 with dusky. Outer tail-feathers, white. (Details omitted.) 

 Young much more yellowish, and less streaked. 



(&). Of two eggs in my collection, one measures -95 X '65 

 of an inch, and is grayish- white, thickly and minutely marked 

 with ashy brown, forming a dark ring about the crown. The 

 other is tinged with green, is more evenly marked, and meas- 

 ures *90 X '70 of an inch. The nest is built upon the ground. 



17. The Icteridse (or starlings) include the blackbirds, 

 orioles, etc. As Dr. Coues says ; " the relationships are very 

 close with the Fringillidce, on the one hand ; on the other, they 

 grade toward the crows (Corvidce). They share with the frin- 

 gilline birds the characters of angulated commissure and nine 



