134 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



described as the feeling for nature, which is not 

 universal. Thus, one man will dine with zest on 

 a pheasant, partridge, or quail, but would be 

 choked by a lark; while another man will eat 

 pheasant and lark with equal pleasure. Both may 

 be good, honest, moral men; only one has that 

 something which the other lacks. In one the soul 

 responds to the skylark's music "singing at 

 heaven's gate," in the other not; to one the 

 roasted lark is merely a savoury morsel; the 

 other, be he never so hungry, cannot dissociate 

 the bird on the dish from that heavenly melody 

 which registered a sensation in his brain, to be 

 thereafter reproduced at will, together with the 

 revived emotion. It is a curious question, and 

 is no nearer to a settlement when one of these 

 two I have described turns round and calls his 

 neighbour a gross feeder, a worshipper of his 

 belly, a soulless and brutish man; and when the 

 other answers "pooh-pooh" and goes on com- 

 placently devouring larks with great gusto, until 

 he is himself devoured of death. 



To those with whom I am in sympathy in this 

 matter, who love to listen to and are yearly in- 

 vigorated by the skylark's music, and whose souls 



