22 love's meinie. 



by that of any other race of animals capable of compre- 

 hending danger; and their pertinacity and endurance 

 have, in all ages, made them an examj)le to the brave, 

 and an amusement to the base, among mankind. 



22. Kevertlieless, since as sword, as trowel, or as pocket- 

 comb, the beak of the bird has to be pointed, the collec- 

 tion of seeds may be conveniently entrusted to this 

 otherwise penetrative instrument, and such food as can 

 only be obtained by probing crevices, splitting open 

 fissures, or neatly and minutely picking things up, is 

 allotted, pre-eminently, to the bird species. 



The food of the robin, as you know, is very miscel- 

 laneous. Linnaeus says of the Swedish one, • that it is 

 " delectatus euonymi baccis," — '' delighted with dogwood 

 berries," — the dogwood growing abundantly in Sweden, as 

 once in Forfarshire, where it grew, though only a bush 

 usually in the south, with trunks a foot or eighteen inches 

 in diameter, and the tree thirty feet high. But the 

 Swedish robin's taste for its berries is to be noted by you, 

 because, first, the dogwood berry is commonly said to be 

 so bitter that it is not eaten by birds (Loudon, "Arbo- 

 retum," ii., 497, 1.) ; and, secondly, because it is a pretty 

 coincidence that this most familiar of household birds 

 should feed fondly from the tree which gives the house- 

 wife her spindle, — the j^i'oper name of the dogwood in 

 English, French, and German being alike " Spindle-tree." 

 It feeds, however, with us, certainly, most on worms and 

 insects. I am not sure how far the following account of 



