THE SKYLARK IN SCOTLAND.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—Seventy years ago I was a lad of six, and had several larks' nests,—that is, I knew several nests which I piously visited, but confided the existence of them to none. To speak of the song of the cloud-soaring lark is to emulate the poetry of many nationalities, because you find in Fiance, Germany, and England the same boyish love of the lark and his nest as we do in Perthshire and Forfarshire to-day, with, however, the important difference as to their paucity now in Scotland. I own one thousand acres in Forfarshire, and recently spent days perambulating ray fields, and making a personal and careful search if perchance I could see a lark, or hear it sing, or find its simple nest, but I failed utterly. This search implied a stroll over pasture-land, rough heather, hay, foggage, turnip-land, potato-land, woodland, and moorland; but, alas ! the lark's song, so classic and thrilling in olden days, was silent as the grave. Is not this a very regrettable consideration ? And I vouch that though I knew many larks' nests in boyhood and manhood, I never harried one. The love of feathers for ladies' headgear is very detrimental to the propagation of larks ; and even the feathers of the tiny yellowhammer and chaffinch command a good price for ladies' decoration when at the theatre. I suspect the spinning. mill boy, too, as a culprit, who has his Saturday outings from noon till dusk, because I have searched him and his bonnet and found him the cruel burglar of all kinds of eggs, in- cluding those of the skylark, plover, grouse, and pheasant. If some humane society would take this matter up, under high patronage (and why not ?), we might yet in Scotland hear Shelley's lark sing at heaven's portal as of old ; and the aim is assuredly worthy of an effort in the three kingdoms, si vis me non flere. I do not forget the probability that the remorseless starling, with his magisterial gait, may have a hand in the raid, because he is an intruder, and very active where church steeples, cloisters, manor-houses, and country buildings are.—I am, Sir, &c., WILLIAM JAPP, V.D. Broomhall.
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