PEPACTON 



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 mas- 

 culine 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 

 long, sharp wings, and something in his manner of 

 flight suggested a shore-bird. I followed him about 

 the meadow and got several snatches of song out 

 of him, but not again the soaring, skyward flight 

 and copious musical shower. By appearing to pass 

 by, I several times got within a few yards of him; 

 as I drew near he would squat in the stubble, and 

 then suddenly start up, and, when fairly launched, 

 sing briefly till he alighted again fifteen or twenty 

 rods away. I came twice the next day and twice 

 the next, and each time found the lark in the 

 meadow or heard his song from the air or the sky. 

 What was especially interesting was that the lark 

 had " singled out with affection " one of our native 

 birds, and the one that most resembled its kind, 

 namely, the vesper sparrow, or grass finch. To this 

 bird I saw him paying his addresses with the great- 

 est assiduity. He would follow it about and hover 

 above it, and by many gentle indirections seek 

 to approach it. But the sparrow was shy, and evi- 

 dently did not know what to make of her distin' 

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