210 
BIRDS IN A VILLAGE. 
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, which has surely lasted long enough. It 
goes without saying that this bird's music is 
eminently pleasing to most persons, that even as 
the sunshine is sweet and pleasant to behold, its 
silvery aerial sounds rained down so abundantly 
from heaven are delightful and exhilarating to all 
of us, or, at all events, to so large a majority that 
the minority are not entitled to consideration. 
One person in five, or perhaps in ten thousand, might 
be found to say that the lark singing in blue 
heaven affords him no pleasure. This being so, 
and ours being a democratic country in which the 
will or desire of the many is or may be made the 
law of the land, it is surely only right and reason- 
able that lovers of lark's flesh should be prevented 
from gratifying their taste at the cost of the 
destruction of so loved a bird ; that they should 
be made to content themselves with quail, and 
woodcock, and snipe on toast, and golden plover, 
and ruff and reeve, and any other bird of delicate 
fl.avour which does not, living, appeal so strongly 
to the 8Dsthetic feelings in us, and is not so 
universal a favourite. 
This, too, will doubtless come in time. Speaking 
for myself, and going back to the former subject, 
