The nests, I fear, with the beautiful eggs and young birds, were
prized quite as highly as the songs of the glad parents, but no Scotch
boy that I know of ever failed to listen with enthusiasm to the songs
of the skylarks. Oftentimes on a broad meadow near Dunbar we stood for
hours enjoying their marvelous singing and soaring. From the grass
where the nest was hidden the male would suddenly rise, as straight as
if shot up, to a height of perhaps thirty or forty feet, and,
sustaining himself with rapid wing-beats, pour down the most delicious
melody, sweet and clear and strong, overflowing all bounds, then
suddenly he would soar higher again and again, ever higher and higher,
soaring and singing until lost to sight even on perfectly clear days,
and oftentimes in cloudy weather "far in the downy cloud," as the poet
says.

To test our eyes we often watched a lark until he seemed a faint speck
in the sky and finally passed beyond the keenest-sighted of us all. "I
see him yet!" we would cry, "I see him yet!" "I see him yet!" "I see
him yet!" as he soared. And finally only one of us would be left to
claim that he still saw him. At last he, too, would have to admit
that the singer had soared beyond his sight, and still the music came
pouring down to us in glorious profusion, from a height far above our
vision, requiring marvelous power of wing and marvelous power of
voice, for that rich, delicious, soft, and yet clear music was
distinctly heard long after the bird was out of sight. Then, suddenly
ceasing, the glorious singer would appear, falling like a bolt
straight down to his nest, where his mate was sitting on the eggs.

It was far too common a practice among us to carry off a young lark
just before it could fly, place it in a cage, and fondly, laboriously
feed it. Sometimes we succeeded in keeping one alive for a year or