Skylark. 183 



Alauda is said to be a Celtic word, meaning 'great songstress/ 

 from al, ' high' or ' great/ and and, ' a song.' Hence is derived 

 the French Alouette (B.O.U.). Our English word 'lark* is a 

 contraction of ' lavrock/ meaning ' a crafty worker/ ' a worker of 

 ill/ and the name points to some superstition, now forgotten, 

 which regarded the bird as of ill- omen [Skeat]. 



71. SKYLARK (Alauda arvensis). 



Intimately associated in the minds of all with blue sky, bright 

 sunshine, open down, and aerial music, is the very name of this 

 favourite songster. All its motions betoken such excessive 

 happiness in unconstrained liberty, such intense appreciation of 

 freedom, as it mounts upwards higher and higher, and soaring 

 into the clouds, pours forth such strains as ravish mortals below, 

 that it is positively painful to see it incarcerated in a cage, and 

 to reflect how its heart must throb, and how intensely it must 

 pine to burst its prison bars and soar away out of sight of its 

 persecutors, singing a hymn of gladness and gratitude at its 

 escape. It remains with us the whole year, and is essentially 

 one of our down birds, preferring open arable lands to more 

 inclosed districts ; towards autumn it associates in flocks and 

 frequents stubble and turnip fields. Its food consists of seeds of 

 all kinds, as well as insects of various sorts ; and the benefit it 

 confers on the agriculturist in this wholesale destruction of 

 noxious weeds and insects is incalculable. But notwithstanding 

 this, it is killed in astonishing numbers for the table in England 

 France, Italy, and especially Germany. In the London markets 

 alone, in 1854, 400,000 are said to have been sold, 20,000 or 

 30,000 having been often sent together. There can be little 

 doubt that over the western half of Europe the Skylark must be 

 the most numerous bird, as from a commercial point of view it is 

 one of the most valuable.* In France it is Alouette des champs, 

 and in Germany Feldlerche, which are simply translations of 

 arvensis ; but in Sweden it is Sang Larka, ' Song-Lark ;' and in 



Professor Newton in fourth edition of Yarrell's ' British Birds/ vol. i., 

 p. 622. 



