Aug. 30.—I seem always to be finding fault with things that novelists say abet birds.. but here is a most unusual case, The story is particularly insistent on the question of dates: it begins by saying that it is "late September":
recounts how the Bright Young Thing is led down the garden path by the Not Very Bright Young Man to admire the Michaelmas Daisies when they againfdrag in dates. by agreeing that Michaelmas Day falls on the 29th. Then some days later (which must bring us at least fo the end of September) the Bright Young Thing takes a walk on the downs and sits on stening to the song of a Lark while she tri to make up her mind about marrying the N.V.B.Y-M.: and inst as she decides that the answer is in the negative—"the lark dropped to the earth" or "into the but he prefers to show his knowledge of natural history by pointing out that larks build their nests on the ground—at the same time hinting at a pretty domestic picture which may make the BY. think a bit. So here we are at the end of September (or possibly in October) when a lark "drops to the nest": the fact that no lark would ever be such a fathead as to drop straight into its nest does not matter (actually it lands some way off and runs to it). The main point is that anyone with the slightest knowledge of birds must know that the lark's breeding season in England is from April to July (possibly from March) and that after bringing up two broods there would be no use for the nest after the end of August at latest; and since larks only use their nests for incubation. etc. none but a crazy lark would drop into an empty nest at the end of September. And the author of this tale? None other than that brilliant biologist H. G. Wells who has given us such magnificent work as "The Outline of History" and "The Science of Life" (ce-author)—but who, apparently has never taken the trouble to study the habits of birds.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.