AMERICAN SKYLARKS 205 



honor, contented Mmself with telling me 

 that I was looking in the wrong place. 

 Perhaps I was. It is easy to criticise. For 

 a minute, indeed, one of the farm-hands ex- 

 cited our hopes. He had found a nest 

 which might be the lark's, he thought ; it 

 was on the ground, at any rate ; but his de- 

 scription of the eggs put an end to any such 

 possibility, and when he led us to the nest 

 it turned out to be occupied by a hermit 

 thrush. Near it he showed us a grouse sit- 

 ting upon her eggs under a roadside fence. 

 It was while repairing the fence that he had 

 made his discoveries. He had an eye for 

 birds. " Those little humming-bu-ds," he 

 remarked, " they 're quite an animal." And 

 he was an observer of human nature as weU, 

 " That fellow," he said, speaking of a young 

 man who was perhaps rather good-natured 

 than enterprising, " that fellow don't do 

 enough to break the Sabbath." 



And this suggests a bit of confession. 

 We were sitting upon the piazza, on Simday 

 afternoon, when a lark sang pretty far off. 

 " Well," said the botanist, " he sings as weU 

 as a savanna sparrow, anyhow." " A sa- 



