ROBIN ROOSTS. 169 
ers of clubs and shirkers of home duties. 
Indeed, a friend who went into the roost 
with me, one evening, remarked upon the 
continual cackling in the treetops as “a very 
social sound;”’ and upon my saying some- 
thing about a sewing circle, he answered, 
quite seriously, “No, it is rather like a gen- 
tleman’s club.” But it would have been 
unscientific, as well as unchristian, to enter- 
tain an hypothesis like this without putting 
its soundness to some kind of test. I 
adopted the only plan that occurred to me, 
—short of rising at half past two o’clock in 
the morning to see the birds disperse. I 
entered the wood just before the assemblage 
was due (this was on the 9th of July), and 
took a sheltered position on the eastern edge, 
where, as the robins flew by me, or alighted 
temporarily in the trees just across the brook, 
they would have the sunlight upon their 
breasts. Here, as often as one came suffi- 
ciently near and in a sufficiently favorable 
light, I noted whether it was an adult, or a 
streaked, spotted bird of the present season. 
As a matter of course, the number concern- 
ing which this point could be positively de- 
termined under such conditions was very 
