THE LARK 255 



meadow or moorland, heath or fell. He loves a breezy 

 table-land. The forest has no charm for him. A Scottish 

 poet addresses him, " Bird of the wilderness ! " and it is in 

 the wilderness that you will find the majority of his tribe. 

 Another and more recent poet, Jean Ingelow, in her sad 

 but beautiful poem, " Divided," paints one such place for us 

 in a couple of lilting verses : — 



"An empty sky, a world of heather, 

 Purple of foxglove, yellow of broom, 

 We two among them walking together 

 Pressing out honey and treading perfume. 



****** 



Crowds of bees are busy with clover, 

 Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet. 



Crowds of larks at their matins hang over, 

 Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet." 



Happily for city-dwellers, it is not necessary to go many 

 miles out to hear the thanksgiving of the Skylark. For 

 on the very edge of the town, within sound of those who 

 are intruding on his green kingdom — ^disregarding the 

 clink of the bricklayer's trowel and the tapping of the 

 carpenter's hammer — you may hear the Lark going up, 

 unscared and undeterred. 



Two safeguards can happily be set against the horrid 

 slaughter of Larks — one is that there are two broods in 

 a year, with four or five nestlings in each, and the other is 

 that the nest itself is peculiarly difiicult to find. Everybody 

 admits this second fact. As an example, I remember once 

 in Devonshire, at Seaton, years ago, a friend pointed out to 

 me a Skylark's nest which he had come upon accidentally 

 in a grassy trench on the cliffs. I looked at it with 

 interest, and hurried on down to the shore. When I 

 returned, in a very short time, I hunted for it in vain. 



