4 Chit-chat. 



sides of a small cottage : there are four distinct pairs of robins 

 around this house ; and one is attached exclusively to my brew- 

 house. In the wide and wild woods, too, I am certain they 

 keep to the same beats; as I noticed for months by the sin- 

 gularly loud, and unusual sort of, song in one belonging to the 

 great cedar of Lebanon near my south entrance : and another, 

 while I was working in a wood, lit on the handle of my spade, 

 while I was eating my bread and cheese ; this I chanced to 

 catch, and, marking him with a scissors by a black cross on 

 his breast, I found he continually kept to the same spot. 



Von Os. How pugnaciously they will fight ! There is a 

 Greek proverb, That two robins will not inhabit the same bush. 

 Should you think the word erithiacus derived from the Greek 

 word signifying strife, which it much resembles ? 



JDov. It may: though it still more nearly resembles another 

 Greek word signifying red. 



Von Os. How do you take these birds at the ornitho- 

 trophes ? 



JDov. Easily, by a trap cage : and having taken one, the 

 rest are all your own. They must, however, be marked with 

 great delicacy and caution : for if tawdrily, or too conspicu- 

 ously, their own friends will fall upon, pummel, and sometimes 

 kill them. When an idle and playful schoolboy at Shrews- 

 bury, under my ever-honoured Master, the learned and muni- 

 ficent Dr. Butler, I put the good people of that town into a 

 day's uproar, by marking a bird. 



Von Os. The Dickens ! ! ! 



Dov. Having taken, in a fall-trap of four bricks, one of 

 those mostradically plebeian of all birds, a dirty town sparrow, 

 I dexterously with a bit of cobbler's wax fastened to his 

 head a fine erect crest of very bright scarlet feathers ; having 

 previously subjected him to the ordeal of the ink-pot. He 

 soon acquired numerous pursuers, and as many outlandish 

 names ; and before nightfall, three, four, and five guineas 

 were offered. He was at length brought down by the cele- 

 brated Sam Hayward, the notorious poacher : and the uni- 

 versal and instantaneous opinion arose that it was a marlock 

 of young Deriwag — for such was my scholastic cognomen, 

 from a cunning knack at ttwggish </mvations. 



Von Os. So, you had a character there, then ? 



Dov. Yes, — and have still, which I will endeavour to 

 deserve and retain to the last hour of my life. 



Von Os. In one of the lectures delivered to that town in 

 Freemason's Hall, I am told you very much amused your 

 audience, by an account of some experiments on swallows. 



Dov. I hope, I did. Many years ago, a garret window in 



