mimic wretchedness, uttering a note so soft and
plaintive, that it requires a strong stimulus to
force the naturalist to rob the poor birds of their
treasure." The nest is made of fine grasses,
lined round with grouse feathers, the walls being
about two inches thick, and embedded to the edges
in the moss. The eggs are laid in the beginning of
July. They are four or five in number, large,
greyish, with many pale blue and brown spots.
The young leave the nest before they are able to
fly. For about a week they follow their parents
over the moss, being fed, and running nimbly,
but squatting closely at the first approach of
danger. They communicate with each other, or
with their parents, by emitting a soft "peep."
If pursued, they open their wings and separate,
making off very quickly. A single pursuer can
rarely hunt down more than one of them. While
the young are being hunted, the old birds
hover overhead, lamenting the danger of their
offspring. "In several instances," says Audubon,
"the old bird followed us almost to our boat,
alighting occasionally on a projecting crag before
us, and entreating us, as it were, to restore its
offspring." The young broods are fledged by
the first of August, and then the different broods
are to be seen collecting in forties or fifties, and
gradually moving towards the islands of the
coast, whence they wing their flight in the
beginning of September. When the day of
departure arrives, they start with the dawn,
flying southward, at a small elevation above the
water, and in straggling parties, scarcely numerous
enough to be called flocks.

We always calumniate those whom we injure.
Nest harriers say the birds feign lameness to lure
their enemies from their nests, but it never yet
has been proved that the lameness is feigned. May
not the nerves which move the wings and legs
be partially and temporarily paralysed by fear?
On finding their nests discovered, may not the
parents be struck and stunned? It is all very
well to say that the birds are feigning; but the
distress and misery are only too real, and are
manifested at the risk of life.

In June the horned larks return to the shores
and islands of Labrador. This is their love
season. The males are flirting, courting, and
fighting. It is the time for jealous rivalry and
duelling. Whenever a fight for a female begins
between two cocks, other cocks are sure to join,
until the duel becomes a battle. Closing with
each other, they flout, bite, and tumble over each
other like sparrows. Shooting naturalists at this
time can bring down three or four of them at a
shot.

The horned appearance of the shore-lark is
given it by a few black feathers which stretch
above each of the eyebrows, and can be erected
at pleasure. Wilson, the ornithologist, suggested
that the lark should be called the Alauda cornuta.
"It is worthy of notice," says the late Mr.
Yarrell, in the preface to the last edition of his
work on British Birds, "that of the more recent
additions to our British birds, half of them are
found in North America; the greater portion of
them being species that resort to high northern
latitudes in their breeding season, and have been
obtained here about or soon after the time of their
autumnal migration to the southward. The
route pursued by birds from North America to
this country is an interesting problem of difficult
solution." This is not the place for solving
the problem, but I may, appropriately enough,
hazard a couple of remarks. The birds do come
here somehow and some way, and surely the
balloon and the telegraph will one day enable
men or news to do what birds can do.

Horned larks, no doubt, owe their vast range
to their instinct of seeking their food and making
their nests along the sea- shore. They have spread
themselves in this way from Labrador to
Exmouth, and if allowed to establish themselves
unmolested, they would add new charms to
our sea-side scenery without costing the
Acclimatisation Society a single penny. Larks have
no crops, and seem unfit for the amazing flights
of falcons and pigeons. They are distinguished
from thrushes and linnets by never hopping or
leaping, their long straight claws spreading
their weight over a wide surface, adapting them,
like those of the lark-buntings, pipits, and
wagtails, for running nimbly among grass, rushes, and
reeds, and upon the mud of marshes. Their
fluttering flying upward while singing, is
characteristic. Their flight is rapid and rather
undulated. When a mother is forced to rise
from her nest, she flies low with a tremulous
flight, and uttering a churm which generally calls
up the male. Larks are kind and attentive to
their young, even in the cage. A captive male
lark has been known to feed several broods of
young birds of his own and other species. Mac
Gillivray says the hole in which the nest is set, is
so regularly rounded that it must be scraped out
by the birds themselves.

Of the homed larks which have been kept in
an aviary in Brighton since last November, I have
observed nothing very interesting. The comradeship
between the shore-larks and the snow and
Lapland buntings shows itself, perhaps, even
more remarkably in captivity than in liberty; for
even in the shortest flights taken in the aviary
the lark almost always accompanies the bunting.
When the bunting is at rest, the lark perches
itself upon the topmost piece of rock-work,
fluttering its wings with a constant mimicry of
upward flight.

A CURIOUS MARRIAGE CEREMONY.

WE have received with the last mail from
Calcutta a small Bengali pamphlet, containing
an account of a marriage conducted in accordance
with the religion of the Brahmas, who
form a religious sect in Bengal, resembling the
"Theophilanthropists" of France. The founder
of the sect was the late Rajah Rammohun