Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/114

Rh sensation of freshness without coldness. Away we tripped across the fields that crown the summit of Byng Cliff, treading on a soft and painted carpet of daisies and buttercups, pimpernel, clover and dandelion. The suburbs and villas looked attractive in their bowery groves, just flushed with green. Cockchafers, with loud buzzings, were "wheeling their drony flight" round the brambles of the hedgerows, and Larks were singing by scores in the dazzling sky, now and then dropping to hover over the grass a moment, before they sank in. A sweet picture of innocent happiness does this bird present; he pours out his heart in thrilling song far above the world in the full beams of the bright sun, and then sinks to repose in his humble nest, where the embrace of love welcomes him, and his infant progeny call forth all his fondness and all his joy!

Hark to that little snatch of a song! I thought it at first some lad at work, whistling "for want of thought", so full and mellow are the notes: but no; it is a Starling in yonder cage. He repeats this bar every two minutes or so, with an interval of silence between. Flocks of Starlings circle round the fields, not yet reduced to slavery and the cage; and there the Poke-pudding flits by, trailing after him his more than sufficient longitude of tail.

We get into a lane, deeply cut up with ruts, and reduced in its narrow dimensions by heaps of rotting sea-grass bordering each side, on which we have to mount to allow the manure-cart to pass. The carter-lad, not unmindful of the elegancies of life, amidst his somewhat sordid employment, has decked the head