i66 



AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



Before I had I got fifty yards from the station I began 

 to hear the larks, and being unprepared for them I was 

 a little puzzled at first, but was not long in discovering 

 what luck I was in. The song disappointed me at first, 

 being less sweet and melodious than I had expected to 

 hear, indeed I thought it a little sharp and harsh, — a 

 little stubbly, — but in other respects, in strength and 

 gladness and continuity, it was wonderful. And the 

 more I heard it the better I liked it, until I would 

 gladly have given any of my songsters at home for a 

 bird that could shower down such notes, even in au- 

 tumn. Up, up, went the bird, describing a large 

 easy spiral till he attained an altitude of three or four 

 hundred feet, when, spread out against the sky for a 

 space of six or eight minutes, he poured out his de- 

 light, filling all the vault with sound. The song is of 

 the sparrow kind, and, in its best parts, perpetually 

 suggested the notes of our vesper sparrow ; but the 

 wonder of it is its copiousness and sustained strength. 

 There is no theme, no beginning, middle, or end, like 

 most of our best bird songs, but a perfect swarm of 

 notes pouring out like bees from a hive and resembling 

 each other nearly as closely, and only ceasing as the 

 bird nears the earth again. We have many more me- 

 lodious songsters ; the bobolink in the meadows, for 

 instance ; the vesper sparrow in the pastures, the pur- 

 ple finch in the groves, the winter wren, or any of the 

 thrushes in the woods, or the wood-wagtail, whose air 

 song is of a similar character to that of the sky-lark's, 



