132 PEPACTON 



early May, when, through the maze of 'bird-voioes, 



— laughter of robins, call of meadowlarks, song of 

 bobolinks, ditty of sparrows, whistle of orioles, twit- 

 ter of swallows, etc. , with which the air was filled, 



— my ear suddenly caught an unfamiliar strain. 

 I paused to listen: can it be possible, I thought, 

 that I hear a lark, or am I dreaming? The song 

 came from the air, above a wide, low meadow many 

 hundred yards away. Withdrawing a few paces to 

 a more elevated position, I bent my eye and ear 

 eagerly in that direction. Yes, that unstinted, 

 jubilant, skyward, multitudinous song can be none 

 other than the lark's! Any of our native songsters 

 would have ceased while I was listening. Pres- 

 ently I was fortunate enough to catch sight of the 

 bird. He had reached his climax in the sky, and 

 was hanging with quivering wings beneath a small 

 white cloud, against which his form was clearly 

 revealed. I had seen and heard the lark in Eng- 

 land, else I should still have been in doubt about 

 the identity of this singer. While I was climbing 

 a fence I was obliged to take my eye from the 

 bird, and when I looked again the song had ceased 

 and the lark had gone. I was soon in the meadow 

 above which I had heard him, and the first bird I 

 flushed was the lark. 



How strange he looked to my eye (I use the 

 masculine gender because it was a male bird, but 

 an Irishman laboring in the field, to whom I related 

 my discovery, spoke touchingly of the bird as "she," 

 and I notice that the old poets do the same), — his 



