SOME BIRD LORE 6i 



the fretting hum of troublesome insects will worry 

 the listening ear: 



" What ! would you rather see the incessant stir 

 Of insects in the windrows of the hay, 



And hear the locust and the grasshopper 

 Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play ? 



Is this more pleasant to you than the whir 

 Of meadow-lark and her sweet roundelay, 



Or twitter of little fieldfares, as you take 



Your nooning in the shade of bush and brake ?" 



Emerson, speaking on this subject, says: 

 " We should go to the ornithologist with a new 

 feeling, if he could teach us what the social birds 

 say when they sit in the autumn council talking to- 

 gether in the trees. The want of sympathy makes 

 his record a dull dictionary. His result is a dead 

 bird. The bird is not in its ounces and inches, 

 but in its relation to nature; and the skin or skeleton 

 you show me is no more a heron than a heap of ashes 

 or a bottle of gases into which his body has been 

 reduced is Dante or Washington." 



Amongst all the birds in this country, the robin 

 and the wren have, perhaps, figured the most 

 extensively in legend and plant lore — in fact, as the 

 old ballad quaintly says: 



" The Robin and the Wren 



Are God Almighty's cock and hen." 



They have both enjoyed an amount of protection 

 almost amounting to superstition, though the 

 wrens did suffer rather badly some few years ago 

 from the attacks of schoolboys. 



Noticing that the wrens usually kept to the 

 shelter of the hedgerows and seldom ventured 



