30 NETHER LOCHABER. 



piping of the throstle, song-thrush, and merle. How it may fare 

 with the reader who tries to decide the point we cannot say. For 

 our own part, no decision that we could ever arrive at could keep 

 its legs for two days together. No sooner did we decide that the sky- 

 lark and its congeners had the best of it, than the goldfinch, with a 

 score of lively cousins to aid and abet, challenged the verdict, and 

 forced us to acknowledge his exquisite mastery in song an admis- 

 sion made, however, only to be retracted again almost as soon as 

 made, for in our walk on the evening of that self-same day did we 

 not stand, and for the life of us couldn't help standing breathless, 

 and hushed, and still to listen to the merle and song-thrush from 

 the neighbouring copse pouring forth the indescribable riches of 

 their God-taught vespers as the sun went down ; and did we not, 

 then and there, vow, in utter forgetfulness of finch and skylark; 

 that no music of earth could for a moment compare, in execution 

 and compass, in distinctness, and cheeriness, and purity of note, 

 with these matchless twilight strains 1 The truth is that no music 

 is equal to bird-music wild-bird music, that is in its season, and 

 amid all its natural surroundings ; and the probability is that we 

 shall give the preference at any time to the melody of one bird 

 over that of another, not on any well-defined principles of choice or 

 selection in the matter, but simply in accordance with our own pre- 

 vailing mood and temperament of the moment. Such, at least, has 

 been our own experience ; but the reader has every opportunity at 

 this season of studying the question for himself and deciding. 

 Except that of the nightingale, perhaps the music of no bird has 

 attracted so much attention by its beauty and suggestiveness as the 

 merry trill of the skylark's ascending song. The poets of every 

 country in which it is to be found have vied with each other in 

 their praises of the only bird that sings as he soars, and soars as he 

 sings, scaling on quivering pinions the aerial terraces of heaven, 

 until he can scarcely be discerned, a music-showering speck against 



