SKY LARK. 
16 
as it were, in the ‘open firmament of Heaven,’ one of the 
‘fowls that may fly’ there, by the permission given to them 
from the Great Creator when they were first called into ex¬ 
istence? I think it is old Izaak Walton who says ‘0 God! 
what happiness must Thou have prepared for Thy saints in 
Heaven, when Thou hast provided bad men with such enjoy¬ 
ments upon earth!’ In descending, too, the same clear note 
is still heard, and it is sometimes continued again after the 
bird has alighted on the ground, and is occasionally uttered 
by it when perched on a bush, and sometimes when hovering 
over a field at but a little height. It has been heard long 
after sunset, even when the night had become quite dark. If 
you have a Lark in a cage, give him his liberty, and make 
him happy. 
And not only is the song of the Sky Lark thus beautiful, 
but it is abundantly bestowed upon us. It is to be heard 
throughout three quarters of the year, nay, one may almost 
say, in some degree, throughout the year, for in the beginning 
of January in the present year, I think I heard, as others 
have before, an attempt at it. Mr. Macgillivray has heard 
the full song in Fifeshire, an appropriate locality, on the 13th. 
of February, and again on the 12th. of March, 1835. It is 
also uttered on the ground, from the top of a clod, or even 
in the concealment of the grass, as well as in the air, though 
not so much so in the former case. It is commenced as early 
as half-past one and two o’clock in the morning, and is 
continued at intervals till after the sun has again gone down. 
The female sings as well as the male. In the winter a faint 
chirp is the ordinary note. 
When ‘April showers’ begin to give promise of returning 
spring, or even earlier, in the beginning of March, as I have 
myself seen them, and in February, the Larks begin to 
separate from their companions of the winter months, with 
whom since the autumn they have associated in large straggling 
flocks, and form their ‘re-unions,’ of a very different nature 
to those of the fashionable world. In the one there is that, 
of which in the other there is none; and this, as Aristotle 
says, makes ‘not a little but the whole difference.’ Two 
broods are frequently reared m the year, the first of which 
is fledged by the middle or end of June, or even the middle 
of May, the eggs being laid the end of April or beginning 
of May; and the second in August, the eggs being laid in 
June or July. In confinement, three and even four sets of 
