SGTPT 145 



quarters. Thus the fieldfare and the redwing, the 

 woodcock and a score of others leave a land of frost 

 and famine to spend the season under milder skies. 



With much of this kind of movement, this exodus in 

 search of food, we are abundantly familiar, as, for in- 

 stance, the flocks of larks that in winter gather on the 

 Sussex downs or among the fields of Bedfordshire. In 

 such vast hosts do they assemble that as many as fifteen 

 thousand have been netted in a single night round the 

 lighthouse tower and in the fields of Heligoland. It is 

 said that half a million are sold each year in the London 

 markets. No fewer than five millions have been brought 

 into Leipsic in the course of twelve months; while a 

 single month's supply for that city has been known to 

 equal the entire yearly sale in London. 



Many protests have been raised against this unholy 

 slaughter, but from the farmer's point of view it is 

 some set off, at least, against the damage done by flocks 

 of skylarks to the springing corn. Some, on the other 

 hand, would plead that by his service of sweet song the 

 skylark's wage is fairly earned. Others again, and it 

 is not impossible that there may even be naturalists 

 among them, regard as no mean addition to the table 

 those "little larks in paper baskets" that made the 

 schoolmaster of Canaan City " feel a Lord all over." 



But there are other birds who, unprompted by ex- 

 perience or the traditions of their clan, know nothing 

 of any land of promise in the south, and who are thrown 

 at once upon the parish. Regarded merely as an in- 

 vestment, looked at solely as a matter of business and of 



