Reproduction 37 
and black where the grass had been burned off. Throughout 
April the only verdure was the green tips of new grass but in 
May the dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) made all the area a 
great field of yellow; dandelion gave way to blue grass in June; 
blue grass to red-top; and by July the whole surface, even most 
of the streetways, were grown up in heavy verdure. As the plant 
life grew the Larks were forced first from their nest sites within 
the blocks, secondarily from their narrow strip near the street 
mounds and lastly, in late June, even from the hazards whose 
depressions, stripped and sanded, nevertheless, under the 
influence of the summer sun, produced too much vegetation for 
the Larks. But what was inhospitable to the Prairie Horned 
Lark proved the most acceptable home to many another bird. 
The West Subdivision (bordering the Main Subdivision on 
the west), as previously stated, had been a garden plot for some 
time but it, too, suffered subdivision, though not until the spring 
of 1926. Having had no grass, and having been cultivated the 
year before, the weeds grew slowly in 1926 and here, among the 
scattered clumps of wild mustard, bindweed, lamb’s quarter, 
cocklebur, wild lettuce and thistles, on the last bare ground the 
vicinity offered, the July nests of the Lark were found. 
The breeding territory at Ithaca.—One nest was located on 
the overturned sod of a former meadow (see Plate X, Figs. 1 
and 2). This nest was destroyed by cultivation and the first 
attempt at renesting was destroyed by oat-sowing, but it is prob- 
able that one nesting may have been successful during the weeks 
the oats were getting under way. 
The most extensive study was made of a series of nestings, 
just east of Ithaca, on an uneven tract that was in part devoted 
to gardening and in part to fall wheat and fall rye. The fall 
wheat area remained suitable for nesting from March, through 
April and well into May, though by the middle of May the wheat 
and rye had attained such a height that only the urge of nest- 
lings would have kept the Larks in it. By June one pair of 
Larks had gone from the wheat area entirely and the other two 
pairs no longer occupied the portions of their territories that 
formerly had extended onto it, but restricted themselves to the 
bare areas of the garden (see Figures 2, 3 and 4). 
