breeding season. It is no wonder Audu- 

 bon grew enthusiastic in describing it. 



"Rising from the nest or from its 

 grassy bed, this plain-looking little bird, 

 clad in the simplest colors, and making 

 but a speck in the boundless expanse, 

 mounts straight up on tremulous wings, 

 until lost to view in the blue ether, and 

 then sends back to earth a song of glad- 

 ness that seems to come from the sky 

 itself, to cheer the weary, give hope to 

 the disheartened, and turn the most in- 

 different, for the moment at least, from 

 sordid thoughts. No other bird music 

 heard in our land compares with the won- 

 derful strains of this songster; there is 

 something not of earth in the rnelody, 

 coming from above, yet from no visible 

 source. The notes are simply indescrib- 

 able; but once heard they can never be 

 forgotten. Their volume and penetra- 

 tion are truly wonderful. They are nei- 

 ther loud nor strong, yet the whole air 

 seems filled with the tender strains and 

 the delightful melody continues long un- 

 broken. The song is only heard for a 

 brief period in the summer, ceasing when 

 the inspiration of the love season is over, 

 and it is only uttered when the birds are 

 soaring." 



Baird, Brewer and Ridgway tell that 

 Captain Blackiston found this skylark 

 common on the prairies of the Saskatche- 

 wan, and described the song as consist- 

 ing of a quick succession of notes, in a 

 descending scale, each note being lower 

 than the preceding. The bird then de- 

 scends to the ground with great rapidity, 

 almost like a stone, and somewhat in the 

 manner of a hawk sweeping on its prey. 



He also saw these birds in nothern Min- 

 nesota. 



Some one says that the larks, those 

 creatures of ''light and air and motion, 

 whose nest is in the stubble and whose 

 tryst is in the cloud," are well-known as 

 the symbol of poets and victim of epi- 

 cures, and Burroughs, to whom they are 

 a symbol, says: "Its type is the grass 

 where the bird makes its home, abound- 

 ing, multitudinous, the notes nearly all 

 alike and in the same key, but rapid, 

 swarming, prodigal, showering down as 

 thick and fast as drops of rain in a sum- 

 mer shower." This of the skylark of 

 Europe. But he adds : "On the Great 

 Plains of the West there is a bird whose 

 song resembles the lark's quite closely, 

 and it is said to be not at all inferior — the 

 Missouri Skylark, an excelsior songster, 

 which from far up in the transparent blue 

 rains down its notes for many minutes to- 

 gether. It is no doubt destined to figure 

 in the future poetical Hterature of the 

 West." 



Yet all that has been written of the 

 "Star of music in a fiery cloud" by Bur- 

 roughs and by Wadsworth, Shelley and 

 the rest, might properly have been in- 

 dited to the "Musical Cherub" of the Big 

 Muddy Valley, when, climbing, "shrill 

 with ecstacy, the trembling air," he "calls 

 up the tuneful nations," and the same 

 celestial pilgrim might have appeared to 

 Eric MacKay: 



"In the light of the day, 



Like a soul on its way 



To the gardens of God, it was loosed from the 



earth ; 

 And the song that it sang was a paean of mirth 

 For the raptures of birth." 



Juliette A. Owen. 



THE MASTER'S PROTEST. 



My song consists of all the notes 



That flow from feathered songsters' throats ; 



My heart is thrilled with all their pain. 



Their sorrow, love, and joy again. 



They have but taken of my song 



A measure, which they warble long. 



So let my protest now be heard — 



O call me not a Mocking-bird ! 



— Hildane Harrington. 



:o3 



