and for the life of us couldn't help standing--breathless, and hushed, and still--to listen to the merle and song-thrush from the neighbouring copse pouring forth the indescribable riches of their God-taught vespers as the sun went down; and did we not, then and there, vow, in utter forgetfulness of finch and skylark, that no music of earth could for a moment compare, in execution and compass, in distinctness, and cheeriness, and purity of note, with these matchless twilight strains? The truth is that no music is equal to bird-music--wild-bird music, that is--in its season, and amid all its natural surroundings; and the probability is that we shall give the preference at any time to the melody of one bird over that of another, not on any well-defined principles of choice or selection in the matter, but simply in accordance with our own prevailing mood and temperament of the moment. Such, at least, has been our own experience; but the reader has every opportunity at this season of studying the question for himself and deciding. Except that of the nightingale, perhaps the music of no bird has attracted so much attention by its beauty and suggestiveness as the merry trill of the skylark's ascending song. The poets of every country in which it is to be found have vied with each other in their praises of the only bird that sings as he soars, and soars as he sings, scaling on quivering pinions the aerial terraces of heaven, until he can scarcely be discerned, a music-showering speck against the background of the blue profound! The other day we fell in with some curious verses by the French poet Du Bartas, in which he strives, and not altogether unsuccessfully, to imitate the merry trill and rhythm of the skylark's song:-- "La gentille aloüette, avec son tire-lire, Tire-lire, à lire, et tire-liran tire; Vers la voute du ciel, puis son vol vers ce lieu, Vire et desire dire adieu Dieu, adieu Dieu!" The last line, if rapidly repeated with the proper beat and intonation, will be found a really very successful imitation of the concluding notes of the lark's well-known song. Many of our readers will remember that the North Uist bard, Ian Mac Codrum, in his Smeorach Chlann-Domhnuill, manages very happily to imitate the smeorach or song-thrush's notes in the burden or chorus; while Alexander Macdonald--Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair--very naturally falls, like the French poet, into an imitation of the wild-bird music of the woods and groves in a stanza that may be quoted not inappropriately at this season:-- "Cha bhi crèutair fo chupan nan spèur 'N sin nach tiunndaidh ri'n speuràd 's ri'n dreach, 'S gun toir Phoebus le buadhan a bhlàis Anam-fas daibh a's caileachdan ceart, Ni iad ais-eiridh choitcheann on uaigh Far na mhiotaich am fuachd iad a steach, 'S their iad--guileag-doro-hidola-hann Dh-fhalbh an geamhra's tha'n samhradh air teachd!"