Their Eggs and Nests, 77 



hair, may be found weeks before leaves are thought of, 

 on the bank-side or low in the hedge, and little con- 

 cealed ; and the four or five beautiful blue eggs in it 

 become familiar to every nest-seeker among his very 

 earliest acquisitions. — Fig. V?*, plate II. 



^OBl'^—{Erj'tIiacus ritbecula). 



Redbreast, Robin Redbreast, Ruddock, Robinet, 

 Bob-Robin. — I remember throwing a stone at a Robin 

 when a very little boy, and to my consternation and 

 utter grief, no less tlian to my surprise, killing it. I 

 " felt bad " about it — as our American friends say — 

 and thought I was as wicked as the Sparrow of bow 

 and arrow memory. It seems to be, or to have been, 

 a conmion feeling among boys, and is embodied in the 

 old lines : — 



" The Robin and the Wren 

 Are God's Cock and Hen." 



How beautiful the Robin's eggs are when just laid ; 

 and how they lose their peculiar pinky loveliness 

 from being blown. A hundred different places, too, 

 the little bird selects for the site of its nest ; often 

 being such, moieover, as to illustrate th iir confiding 

 fearlessness, as much as the r^sulfc in them of the 

 pressure of winter cold and hunger. In the tilt of a 

 wagon ; in a steam boat ; in a room of the cuttagc ; 

 near a blacksmith's forge ; in the constantly-used 

 garden-shed, as well as in the ivy or evergreen bush ; 

 or on the bank, or in the hedge ; or in a hole in the 

 old ruin or bank or house-wall : all places seem to 

 suit it alike. The eggs are five or six, sometimes 



