MOORLAND IDYLLS. 



worth two in the hand or, indeed, two 

 thousand. 



At this moment, to tell you true, our 

 meadows and pastures are just thronged 

 with skylarks. We have always dozens 

 of them, proclaiming their gladness every 

 sunshiny day in rich cataracts of music. 

 But within the last few days the dozens 

 have turned into scores and hundreds, for 

 it is the time of the great influx of Con- 

 tinental larks over sea into England. 

 There is a difference, too, though a slight 

 one, between our true home birds and 

 the hungry refugees who flock here for 

 food and warmth in winter. Our native 

 and resident skylark is the smaller bird 

 of the two, and more russet in colour; the 

 migrants who join him in our winter fields 

 are both larger and darker. Their ashy 

 isabelline plumage, cold grey granite in 

 hue, has less of a generous rufous tinge 

 to relieve it than in the true-born Briton. 

 Such minor differences, indeed, between 

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