66 OUR BIRD ALLIES. 
for the song is more conspicuous in the stillness of 
the evening than during the hours of day, when the 
attention, as a rule, is occupied with other matters. 
But no one in the habit of taking a country ramble, 
and noticing that which passes around him, can have 
failed to learn that the nightingale is seldom silent 
until the eggs are hatched, for provided that it be 
unmolested, and that the neighbourhood in which it 
takes up its abode be not unduly close to the haunts 
of men, there is scarcely an hour of the twenty-four 
in which it may not be heard, pouring out its song 
as gaily by day as by night. And, even in the 
immediate vicinity of human habitations, it is not at 
all uncommon to hear the bird singing away merrily 
at mid-day, although its vocal performances are in 
such a case less continuous than when it has chosen 
for its residence the heart of the woodland. 
EvERYBObDy protects the Robin, not on account of 
its usefulness, but owing to the superstitious reve- 
rence with which the bird is almost universally 
regarded. We learn in early childhood that 
The robin and the wren 
Are God's cock and hen, 
a somewhat meaningless couplet, which by many is 
looked upon as conclusive evidence in the bird’s 
favour. ‘‘Similes,” says a somewhat cynical modern 
writer, “‘are not arguments; that is why they con- 
vince people so.” And nursery rhymes and proverbs 
may rank with similes in this respect. 
