COCK ROBIN'S COUNTERFEITS 



Like many another well-known character, "Joly 

 Robyn " has had his impersonators ; guiltless, 

 however, of conscious fraud, for the false posi- 

 tion that they occupy is not of their own seek- 

 ing, but is the outcome of the fact that wherever 

 it has established itself, the Anglo-Saxon race 

 has tried to find in some exotic bird a repre- 

 sentative of the little friend at home. Some of 

 these, indeed, seem poor enough substitutes at 

 best, for even the well-known red breast, which 

 gives the home bird his true title, as dis- 

 tinguished from his better known nickname, 

 is not always to be found in his foreign locum 

 tenens. 



Perhaps the best known of all these outlandish 

 robins is one of those least appropriately so 

 called, namely, the handsome thrush which bears 

 the name of robin in the United States. This 

 fine bird is very like our fieldfare, but has a 

 plain orange breast instead of the speckled 

 tawny one of our winter visitant from the 

 north. He is a typical thrush in all his ways, 

 as voracious a consumer of fruit as the English 

 blackbird, and, being migratory, does not figure 



