NATURE NOTES 
There is no more reason for poets to be squeamish about 
their victuals than other folk of refinement. Oysters, beef- 
steaks, geese, and so on are quite fitting as bardic nourishment, 
at any rate until honey-dew and the milk of Paradise be brought 
to market ; but if Wordsworth or Shelley ate larks, faith receives 
a shock indeed. 
Poets are the exponents and guides of human feeling. If 
otherwise, they would scarcely be themselves worth preserving. 
But it is not necessary to go to school to the poets ; it is not 
necessary to reach a high plane of sentiment in order to abjure 
the lark culinary. The living sky-lark is a joy to all. No heart 
is so tough as to be insensible to the beauty of its movement 
and song when seen and heard. Just so. W’hen seen and heard. 
But many do not see and hear, and many who do, forget in 
towns in the dark winter. Not seldom, too, does the festive 
diner, when confronted by mauviettes a IT mpe rat rice think in this 
manner : “ Well, it is a pity they were killed, but they cannot 
be restored to life, so I may as well eat them as some one else. 
Or, as they are a ITinperatrice, perhaps better.” Cheered by this 
fallacy he enjoys his two mouthfuls. 
A very important point is the small size of the skylark. You 
kill this life for what ? For literally two mouthfuls — stuffing, or 
other foreign accessory being excluded. If a lark were as big as 
a duck the case would be different. Lejeit ne vaut pas la chandclle. 
They say that poulterers and cooks can between them turn 
sparrows into larks. And sparrows — well, there is perhaps an 
embarrassing wealth of sparrows. Would it be impossible to 
persuade inveterate lark-eaters to order sparrows, and see that 
they get them ? 
The Thames as a Salmon River. — Some interesting letters 
have been lately printed in the Times on the proposal to attempt 
the restoration of the Thames as a salmon river. The two 
causes adverse to the life of salmon in the Thames are the 
obstructions which prevent the passage of the fish, and the 
pollution of the lower river. The former is the more potent. A 
certain amount, perhaps a jarge amount, of pollution salmon can 
bear when cn route, but inability to reach the upper waters is 
necessarily fatal. Mr. Stuart Moore tells us that down to the 
time of Henry VI. mills were slight structures, and seldom built 
on the main stream. Fishery weirs and kiddles were structures 
of wood and wattles, and did not altogether obstruct the passage 
of the fish. “ Later on mills were improved and enlarged and 
the dams heightened and made stronger, and we find in manorial 
accounts that a dwindling of the profits of salmon fisheries began 
in the times of Henry VI. and Edward IV. By the time of 
Henry VIII. many rivers were almost destroyed as salmon 
rivers. A remedy for the evil was found in 23 Henry VIII., 
1532, in the passing of the ‘ Bill of Sewers.’ The commis- 
sioners appointed under that Act ruthlessly swept away the mills, 
