no BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



taste, of the sense of fitness, of that something vaguely 

 described as the feeling for nature, which is not 

 universal. Thus, one man will dine with ?est on a 

 pheasant, partridge, or quail, but would be choked 

 by a lark ; while another man will eat pheasant and 

 lark with equal pleasure. Both may be good, honest, 

 moral men ; only one has that something which 

 the other lacks. In one the soul responds to the 

 skylark's music " singing at heaven's gate," in the 

 other not ; to one the roasted lark is merely a savoury 

 morsel; the other, be he never so hungry, cannot 

 dissociate the bird on the dish from that heavenly 

 melody which registered a sensation in his brain, 

 to be thereafter reproduced at will, together with the 

 revived emotion. It is a curious question, and is no 

 nearer to a setdement when one of these two I have 

 described turns round and calls his neighbour a 

 gross feeder, a worshipper of his belly, a soulless 

 and brutish man ; and when the other answers 

 " pooh-pooh " and goes on complacently devouring 

 larks with great gusto, until he is himself devoured 

 of death. 



To those with whom I am in sympathy in this 

 matter, who love to listen to and are yearly invig- 

 orated by the skylark's music, and whose souls are 

 yearly sickened at the slaughter of their loved 

 songsters, I would humbly suggest that there is a 

 simpler, more practical means of ending this dispute. 



