18 



and can't tell jon how inncli he is onr own, or how far he 

 is a traveller. 



And, indeed, are not all onr ideas obsenre abont migra- 

 tion itself? Yon are broadly told that a bird travels, 

 and how wonderful it is that it finds its way; but you are 

 scarcely ever told, or led to think, what it really travels 

 for — whether for food, for warmth, or for seclusion — and 

 how the travelling is connected with its fixed home. 

 Birds have not their town and country houses, — their vil- 

 las in Ital}^, and sliooting boxes in Scotland. The coun- 

 try in which they build their nests is their proper home, 

 — the country, that is to say, in which they pass the 

 spring and summer. Then they go south in the winter, 

 for food and warmth; but in what lines, and by what 

 stages ? The general definition of a migrant in this hemi- 

 sphere is a bird that goes north to build its nest, and 

 south for the winter; but, then, the one essential point to 

 know about it is the breadth and latitude of the zone it 

 properly inhabits, — that is to say, in which it builds its 

 nest; next, its habit of life, and extent and line of south- 

 ing in the w^inter ; and, finally, its manner of ti*a veiling. 



17. I^ow, here is this entirely familiar bird, the robin. 

 Quite the first thing that strikes me about it, looking at it 

 as a painter, is the small effect it seems to have had on 

 the minds of the southern nations. I trace nothing of it 

 definitely, either in the art or literature of Greece or 

 Italy. I find, even, no definite name for it; you don't 

 know if Lesbia's "passer" had a red breast, or a blue, or 



