answers to the skylark. The American pipit or titlark and the shore
lark, both birds of the far north, and seen in the States only in
fall and winter, are said to sing on the wing in a similar strain.
Common enough in our woods are two birds that have many of the
habits and manners of the lark--the water-thrush and the golden-
crowned thrush, or oven-bird. They are both walkers, and the latter
frequently sings on the wing up aloft after the manner of the lark.
Starting from its low perch, it rises in a spiral flight far above
the tallest trees, and breaks out in a clear, ringing, ecstatic
song, sweeter and more richly modulated than the skylark's, but
brief, ceasing almost before you have noticed it; whereas the
skylark goes singing away after you have forgotten him and returned
to him half a dozen times.

But on the Great Plains, of the West there; is a bird whose song
resembles the skylark's quite closely and is said to be not at all
inferior. This is Sprague's pipit, sometimes called the Missouri
skylark, an excelsior songster, which from far up in the
transparent blue rains down its notes for many minutes together. It
is, no doubt, destined to figure in the future poetical literature
of the West.

Throughout the northern and eastern parts of the Union the lark
would find a dangerous rival in the bobolink, a bird that has no
European prototype, and no near relatives anywhere, standing quite
alone, unique, and, in the qualities of hilarity and musical
tintinnabulation, with a song unequaled. He has already a secure
place in general literature, having been laureated by no less a
poet than Bryant, and invested with a lasting human charm in the
sunny page of Irving, and is the only one of our songsters, I