68 BIRDS OF THE GARDEN AND ORCHARD. 



Natural History, — if this science be doomed ever to suf- 

 fer such a curse, when, by the use of new names for every 

 thought of the human mind, we shall all be reduced to a 

 sudden ignorance of everything we once knew, and ren- 

 dered incapable of talking or writing without constant 

 reference to a new dictionary of terms, — the Meadow- 

 Lark may yet he discovered to be no bird at all, but a 

 mere myth of the meadows. 



The Meadow-Lark, though not the " Messenger of 

 Morn" that "calls up the tuneful nations," and though 

 perhaps not properly classed among our singing-birds, has 

 a peculiar lisping note which is very agreeable, and not 

 unlike some of the strains in the song of the English 

 Wood-Lark, as I have heard them from a caged bird. Its 

 notes are heard soon after those of the Eobin, the earliest 

 messenger of morn among our singing-birds. They are 

 shrill, drawling, and plaintive, sometimes reminding me 

 of the less musical notes of the Eedwing and sometimes 

 of the more musical and feeble song of the Green War- 

 bler. Nuttall very aptly describes its notes by the sylla- 

 bles et-see-dee-ah, each one drawled out to a considerable 

 length. These are repeated at all hours of the day; in- 

 deed, they are almost incessant, for hardly a minute 

 passes when, if a pair of the birds a,re located in an ad- 

 joining field, you may not hear them. It is the constant 

 repetition of their song that has led gunners to the dis- 

 covery of the birds, which, if they had been silent, might 

 have escaped notice. 



That numerous class of men who would be more en- 

 raptured at the sight of " four-and-twenty blackbirds 

 baked in a pie " than at the sound of their notes, though 

 they equalled those of the Nightingale, — men who never 

 look upon a bird save with the eyes and disposition of a 

 prowling cat, and who display their knowledge of the 

 feathered race chiefly at the gun-shops, — martial heroes 



