it for anybody. " Your fortune's waiting for you.
Go in, my boy — go in and win."

"Yes," said Frank. " Thank you. It will be
rather difficult to go in and win, at first. Of course,
as you have always told me, a man's business is
to conquer his difficulties, and not to talk about
them. At the same time, I wish I didn't feel
quite so loose as I do in my figures. It's
discouraging to feel loose in one's figures.—Oh,
yes; I'll write and tell you how I get on. I'm
very much obliged by your kindness, and very
sorry I couldn't succeed with the engineering. I
think I should have liked engineering better than
trade. It can't be helped now, can it? Thank
you, again. Good-by."

So he drifted away into the misty commercial
future — as aimless, as helpless, as gentlemanlike
as ever.

LARKS ON THE WING.

DURING the last thirty years, a lark of a kind
doubly remarkable for having an appearance of
horns on its head, and for making its nest on the
shores of the sea, has been rarely, but with a
diminishing rarity, found upon the coasts of the
British Islands. More than thirty years ago, the
first specimen of it of which I can find any
record, was seen upon the beach at Sherringham, in
Norfolk. This was received with the hospitality
always bestowed in these islands upon foreigners
clad in feathers: in other words, duly shot,
stuffed, sold, and exhibited. After being exhibited
for several years, a bird-wise man pronounced it
to be a specimen of the Alauda alpestris of
Linnsæus. Twenty-two years afterwards, a second
specimen was seen upon the beach near
Yarmouth. This beautiful stranger had come from
afar, to diminish the noxious insects upon our
coasts and charm the solitary inhabitants of our
surf-lashed rocks or stunted downs with its
melodious songs; but it was, of course, watched,
waylaid, shot, stuffed, sold, and exhibited. There is
not a scene, however lovely, on the whole line of
the shores surrounding the gems set in the
sounding sea, and called the British Islands, to
which these larks would not add additional and
entrancing charms of beauty and music if they were
allowed to establish themselves peaceably as
permanent features of British sea-side scenery.
Bird-lore is gathered from books, museums, aviaries,
and nature: the latter being the fountain supplying
the others. The secrets of bird-life may be
obtained by studying living birds, but they never
can be gathered from measurements however
accurate, nor descriptions however minute, of
stuffed specimens. It is almost in vain that
much ingenuity is expended in trying to make
these specimens look alive, for they are dead,
and life alone can tell the story of life. But
all the earliest arrivals of these beautiful
songsters were shot. They fell victims of the custom
prevalent all round the civilised world, according
to which, the moment a rare bird is seen, the
hue and cry is raised and everybody runs out
with his gun. A shore-lark was killed near Redcar,
in Lincolnshire; a pair were subsequently
shot near Gravesend; and last year, no less than
five were shot near Sheerness, in Kent. Nest-
harrying is even worse than bird-killing, and ten
years ago the nest of a shore-lark was discovered
and harried near the sea in the neighbourhood
of Exmouth. In the middle of November last,
three homed larks were caught by a bird-catcher
with a clap-net upon the downs, near the sea,
beyond Rottingdean, and about four miles east
of Brighton, in Sussex. Two of these larks are
still alive and well, in an aviary: where the
writer has repeatedly seen them.

The county of Sussex, unsurpassed for the
various kinds of birds found in it, is peculiarly
celebrated for its larks. Nowhere is the lark—
which is called the skylark because it chooses the
sky as its choir, and called the fieldlark because
it builds its nest in the fields —heard more
frequently. Larks, if rarely seen upon the Sussex
downs in summer, congregate upon the coast
in vast flocks during the hard frosts of winter.
When the winters are mild, the price of larks in
Brighton is from eighteen-pence to a couple of
shillings the dozen, whilst during a severe frost
a dozen of them may be bought for sixpence.
The food question contains the explanation of the
flights of these flocks. When the frost makes
the fields as hard as iron, and covers the earth and
forest with snow, and the rivers with ice, the
birds find that the whole of the inland tracts of
country, whether of continents or of islands, have
become suddenly foodless. The corn-stacks of
the farm-yard refuse to yield them even a few
grains, except where gins and traps are set to
catch them. There is not such a thing as a worm
or a slug to be had for any amount of scraping
or picking. Every lad about a farm is out with his
fowling-piece, and even the reflected light from
the dazzling white expanse drives the birds away,
being painful and hurtful to their eyes. Hence,
the vast flocks which astonish the dwellers upon
the southern coasts and islands. The weather
is never so severe on the coasts as inland.
Within the margin between high and low-water
mark there is always food to be found—weeds,
insects, crustaceans, and mollusks—the very
storms of winter strewing the shores with
abundant supplies of food for the frozen-out birds
at the precise season when the land refuses to
furnish it. During the severe Christmas of
1860, the land birds appeared on the southern
and western coasts in unwonted numbers, and
there was an abundance of food for them on
the smaller islands. Upon Lundy Island, on the
Devonshire coast, larks were so numerous that
a shot fired at a snipe or a starling was pretty
sure to kill unintentionally three or four larks.

Larks are caught in the neighbourhood of
Brighton by the lark-glass, by trailing-nets, and
clap-nets. The lark-glass may be fashioned
according to the whim or caprice of the maker.
A glass of a form which has been very successful
may be made by planing a piece of wood about