home near them.

Some of the sweetest of our

singing birds come to our gardens and shrubberies, or utter their strains about our paths and homes; while some, like the skylark, are musicians of the fields, and we have only to take our course where the green corn is gradually preparing for the food of man, and there we shall find tones which we should listen for in vain among the shadows of green boughs. He who made the earth and man upon it, gave us not only the materials which our skill might fashion into sources of physical comfort; but he scattered there, too, the sights which should delight the eye, and tones which should minister to the spirit through the outward ear.

Winter is here, and the frosts and snows of yesterday have left their diamonds on the leafless sprays and the green blades, and thrown large white patches over the field. In a few hours the sun shall bid them all glide away from the land, for the air is clear, and the sky is blue, and the Lark*

The Skylark is seven inches and a quarter in length. Head crested; general plumage brown, dark in the centre, and pale at the edges; outer tail-feather white; the next streaked with white; throat and breast pale brown spotted with dark brown; under parts dull white; beak and feet brown; hind claw very long and nearly straight.

(Alauda arvensis) is singing at Heaven's gate so rejoicingly, that we feel that there can be few sounds of earth

"More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear."

We watch the bird as it ascends almost perpendicularly in its direction, but by sudden starts and a somewhat curve-like motion. Higher and higher it rises, and

"Singing ever soars, and soaring ever sings;"

soon it is a tiny speck in the blue sky, but its voice reaches us yet, in one clear loud carol; and now the bird is lost to our sight in the blue clouds, but the strain is heard still. Those who hear the lark singing thus high in the air, know that it gives a promise of some hours of fine weather, for, like many of our old proverbs, that which is in common use in country places, in some measure is founded on correct observation:

"When the lark is mounted high

He drives the clouds out from the sky."

These are but rough rhymes, yet it is true that the bird will not sing during rain, nor mount far in the air when the sky is at all overcast. But

the lark, though loving the sky well, has ties to earth; and now it descends slowly in a slanting line, till it is about twelve feet from the land; when darting onward like an arrow from a bow, and gradually lessening the power of the song, it reaches the earth in silence.

That hymn of joy is heard not only as early as February, but it is sung during nearly eight months of the year. It is one of the first which reaches the ear of the husbandman, when he goes forth to his daily labour. That matin hymn is silenced at noonday, but when the afternoon is come with its coolness, or evening with its lengthened shadows, the lark again chants forth its melody. In ancient Greece the afternoon song was the signal for the reaper to recommence the work which had been intermitted during the heat of noon. Wherever the lark is plentiful, it is sure to be heard at this time of the day, over the cornfield or other cultivated land. To rise with the lark, as well as to lie down with the lamb, has long been a rustic precept in our country; and by two o'clock in the summer morning, our lark has arisen to salute the dawn, though even then the redbreast may have sung its song before it.

Shakespere, like many another poets, loved the