The Zoologist— April, 1871- 2559 



materials, disposed with great regularity. The eggs are four, some- 

 times five, white, marked with specks, and several large blotches 

 of reddish brown, chiefly at the thick end. Their food consists of 

 caterpillars, grub- worms, beetles and grass-seeds, with a con- 

 siderable proportion of gravel. Their general name is the meadow 

 lark ; among the Virginians they are usually called the old field 

 lark. The length of the bird is ten inches and a half, extent 

 sixteen and a half; throat, breast, belly and line from the eye to 

 the nostrils rich yellow ; inside lining and edge of the wing the 

 same ; an oblong crescent of deep velvety black ornaments the 

 lower part of the throat; lesser wing-coverts black, broadly 

 bordered with pale ash; rest of the wing-feathers light brown, 

 handsomely serrated with black ; a line of yellowish white divides 

 the crown, bounded on each side by a stripe of black, intermixed 

 with bay, and another line of yellowish white passes over each eye 

 backwards ; cheeks bluish white ; back and rest of the upper parts 

 beautifully variegated with black, bright bay and pale ochre ; tail 

 wedged, the feathers neatly pointed, the four outer ones on each 

 side nearly all white; sides, thighs and vent pale yellow-ochre, 

 streaked with black; upper mandible brown, lower bluish white; 

 eyelids furnished with strong black hairs; legs and feet very large, 

 and of a pale flesh-colour. The female has the black crescent 

 more skirted with gray, and not with so deep a black. In the 

 rest of her markings, the plumage differs little from that of the 

 male." — Wilson's American Orniihology, p. 175 of Jameson'' s 

 Edition. 



The specimen in question was killed by a man when snipe- 

 shooting close to the town of Cheltenham, twenty-five or more 

 years ago : it rose from a swampy piece of ground frequented by 

 snipe. A well-known ornithologist, writing in the 'Field' news- 

 paper, observes that the bird has nothing to do with the family 

 of larks (Alaudidce), but is an aberrant form of the hang-nests 

 [Icterida] : it is a curious compound of several widely different 

 families. With the beak and feet of a starling it has the rounded 

 wings of a gallinaceous bird, and rises with the same whirring 

 sound; the dorsal feathers are those of a hemipode, the win«^- 

 coverts, tertiaries and tail those of a snipe or sandpiper, while the 

 colouring of the under parts, yellow with black pectoral band, is 

 much like that of a Macronyx, a remarkable African genus of 

 gigantic pipits. 



