50 MUTTON BIRDS 



Chapter VII. 



THE SOUTH ISLAND ROBIN. 



low comes it tliat these Robins are so 

 extremely tame? How comes it that 

 they prefer to build by the residences 

 of man? If we can build a perfect 

 structure from a single bone, infer- 

 ences may be drawn too from the surviving 

 traits of faith and trust ; they, too, are facts. 



We know the toothed birds of earliest fossil 

 finds to have been half reptilian in form, and 

 that, though differentiated on divergent lines, 

 reptiles and birds are relatives still in no remote 

 degree. If to this day in certain alien breeds 

 reptilian traits survive, if some birds live yet 

 who bury their eggs as turtles do in sand and 

 trust theii' incubation to the sun or to the heat of 

 decomposing vegetation, then traits of trust in 

 man may have descended too. 



Sometimes I like to dream — 'tis but a vain 

 imagining — that the exceeding trustfulness of 

 the Robin may have been evolved during some 

 long gone golden age when mankind really loved 

 his birds. 



I like to dream that to some ancient race the 

 Robin may have been a temple bird, secure in the 

 precincts of the quiet courts, eyed with austere 



