With regard to his ascent, I must, however, add that it is in a spiral direction, and that what Bewick represents as springs are his sudden spiral flights after pausing to sing. Another peculiarity must be mentioned: all his bones are hollow, and he can inflate them with air from his lungs, so that he becomes, as it were, a little balloon, which accounts for the buoyancy with which he ascends, and the length of time he can support himself in the air: often for an hour at a time. Still more extraordinary is the wonderful power and reach of his voice, for while, probably, the seven hundred or a thousand voices of the grand chorus of an oratorio would fail to fill the vast spaces of the atmosphere, it can be done by this glorious little songster, which, mounting upwards, makes itself heard, without effort, when it can be seen no longer. [Sidenote: _Its Solicitude for its Young._] The attachment of the parents to their young is very great, and has been seen to exhibit itself in a remarkable manner. The nest being placed on the open-ground—often pasture, or in a field of mowing grass—it is very liable to be disturbed; many, therefore, are the instances of the bird’s tender solicitude either for the young or for its eggs, one of which I will give from Mr. Jesse. “In case of alarm,” he says, “either by cattle grazing near the nest, or by the approach of the mower, the parent-birds remove their eggs, by means of their long claws, to a place of greater security, and this I have observed to be affected in a very short space of time.” He says that when one of his mowers first told him of this fact he could scarcely believe it, but that he afterwards saw it himself, and that he regarded it only as another proof of the affection which these birds show their offspring. Instances are also on record of larks removing their young by carrying them on their backs: in one case the young were thus removed from a place of danger into a field of standing corn. But however successful the poor birds may be in removing their eggs, they are not always so with regard to their young, as Mr. Yarrell relates. An instance came under his notice, in which the little fledgeling proved too heavy for the parent to carry, and, being dropped from an height of about thirty feet, was killed in the fall. Of all captive birds, none grieves me more than the skylark. Its impulse is to soar, which is impossible in the narrow spaces of a cage; and in this unhappy condition, when seized by the impulse of song, he flings himself upwards, and is dashed down again by its cruel barriers. For this reason the top of the lark’s cage is always bedded with green baize to prevent his injuring himself. In the freedom of nature he is the joyous minstrel of liberty and love, carrying upwards, and sending down from above, his buoyant song, which seems to fall down through the golden sunshine like a flood of sparkling melody.