Surely the skylark loves to live i' the sun, for he is always in the open, summer and winter, as if he would be sure to not miss a single sunbeam. As is the case with most of our birds who dwell or nest near our homes, the skylark does not seek man for his own sweet sake, but for the sake of what the farm holds; though no marauder is this lark, for it eats ground insects nearly the whole year--crickets, and beetles, and grubs, and worms, and little folk who see no further than their noses. To be sure, in late fall, after the farmer's buck-wheat and other grains are ripened and mostly harvested, the larks visit the fields in flocks to gather up the crumbs and grow fat on the change from a meat to a vegetable diet. This growing fat, by reason of his generous diet in late fall, just before the snows come, serves the same purpose as does the fattening of bear just before winter. The snow covers lark's "meat victuals" all up, and the birds must fall back at times on their stores laid by under their skin for this very season. Though they do not hibernate, they still have use for their fat. So has the gunner, and the people with snares ready to set for the unwary and hungry birds. A recent writer, commenting on this autumn sport of the Englishman, excuses their seemingly wanton destruction by observing that "were they not thus taken, large numbers would doubtless meet natural death in their autumn flights." To quote Shakespeare again, "Oftentimes, excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse." There seems to be a sort of inconsistency in the fact that, from earliest times, the human family have been guilty of eating what most they love--or what most they do declare they love. The flavor of the flesh of a bobolink or skylark is hardly out of the mouth before the tongue takes to praising the favorite bird with a psalm or hymn; in due time the poet and singer bethinks him of his annual feast of flesh, and his spiritual appreciation grows thin. [Illustration: HORNED LARK.] We are thankful, in spite of all this, that the poets and singers sing on. They have immortalized the skylark of Europe as no other known bird is immortalized. Superstition claims the bird as peculiarly its own. Do not its prophets divine things mysterious and darkly subtle by the skyward flight of the bird? And its song! Any priest of the craft may read in its varying notes all sorts of fortunes to people and clans.