no BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



taste, of the sense of fitness, of that something vaguely 

 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 complacently 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 invig- 

 orated by the skylark's music, and whose souls are 

 yearly sickened at the slaughter of their loved 

 songsters, I would humbly suggest that there is a 

 simpler, more practical means of ending this dispute, 



