A Caged Skylark 



157 



perched on my hand and went through his post pranJid/ toilet, thus 

 giving the class an idea of bird-taming which no amount of books 

 or anything I might have said could have possibly equaled. Many 

 expressed themselves as never having seen so successful a "dem- 

 onstration." Some said that I must be in league with higher powers, 

 and it all must have been "providential." This may be true, for 

 anything I know to the contrary. But it may have been sim])ly im- 

 proving the opportunities of a happy accident; and 'accidents,' 

 we know, "never happen among the Hottentots." If flowers and 

 honey can do it, at any rate, such accidents shall be more fre- 

 quent about my home in the future. 



A Peculiarity of a Caged Skylark 



BY H. M. COLLINS 



O birds reverse the usual order of things, and from 

 a serious and stolid youth develop mature play- 

 -\ 7^j^^^^^~j. fulness ? I have been led to ask myself this 

 "^^O^ "^ (piestion by observing the extraordinary playful- 



ness exhibited by a pet Skylark in extreme old age. Upon hearing 

 the owner of the bird declare, "Dickie has reached his dotage, and, 

 is now in a state of second childhood," it occurred to me that birds 

 have no season of youthful frivolity such as Mother Nature accords 

 to her other children. We are accustomed to associate the idea of 

 youth with playfulness : we picture to ourselves the lamb frisking 

 in the meadows, the frolicsome kitten playing upon the hearth, and 

 we groan inwardly when we meditate upon the destructive propensities 

 of our pet puppies, but we think of our young feathered friends as 

 lying inert in their nests, gaping wide open their yellow-edged beaks 

 incessantly for food, and apparently interested in nothing else. 



A caged Skylark is a deplorable object generally, but the Lark 

 of which I am about to write was a bird 'with a history,' and one, 

 whose cage was not a prison but a home. While his native meadow 

 (in Ireland) was being mowed, one of his wings was struck by the 

 mowing-machine and the last joint terribly mutilated. One of the 

 workmen picked up the poor little sufferer and gave him to a little 

 boy whose father was something of a naturalist and a great lover of 

 birds. Examination of the shattered wing revealed the fact that 

 amputation of the last joint would be necessary if the bird's life was 

 to be preserved. The operation was performed, and the little patient 

 was placed in a very large cage carpeted with fresh, green sods. 

 He was well supplied with food and water ; the injured wing healed 



