Our bird of to-day interested me by displaying his “horns,”--curious adornments which I had never been able to make out before, except in pictures. They were not carried erect,--like an owl’s “ears,” let us say,--but projected backwards, and with the head at a certain angle showed with perfect distinctness. The bird would do nothing but eat, and as our own dinner awaited us we continued our tramp. We would try to see more of him and his mate at another time, we promised ourselves. First, however, we paid a visit (that very afternoon) to the upland farm just now spoken of. “Mears’s,” we always call it. Perhaps the larks would be there also. But we found no sign of them, and the bachelor occupant of the house, who left his plough in the beanfield to offer greeting to a pair of strangers, assured us that nothing answering to our description had ever been seen there within his time; an assertion that might mean little or much, of course, though he seemed to be a man who had his eyes open. This happened on May 17. Six days afterward, in company with an entomological collector, we were again in the dusty valley. I went into the larch swamp in search of a Cape May warbler--found here two years before--one of the very best of our Franconia birds; and the entomologist stayed near by with her net and bottles, while the second man kept on a mile farther up the valley to look for thorn-bush specimens. So we drove the sciences abreast, as it were. My own hunt was immediately rewarded, and when the botanist returned I thought to stir his envy by announcing my good fortune; but he answered with a smile that he too had seen something; he had seen the prairie lark soaring and singing. “Well done!” said I; “now you may look for the Cape May, and incidentally feed the mosquitoes, and the lady and I will get into the carriage and take our turn with _Otocoris_.” So said, so done. We drove to the spot, the driver stopped the horses opposite a strip of ploughed land, and behold, there was the bird at that very moment high in the air, hovering and singing. It was not much of a song, I thought, though the entomologist, hearing partly with the eye, no doubt, pronounced it beautiful. It was most interesting, whatever might be said of its musical quality, and as we drove homeward my companion and I agreed that we would take up our quarters for a day or two at the nearest house, and study it more at our leisure. Possibly we should happen upon a nest.