ROBIN ROOSTS. 169 



ers of clubs and shirkers of home duties. 

 Indeed, a friend who went into the roost 

 with me, one evening, remarked upon the 

 continual cackling in the treetops as "a very 

 social sound;" and upon my saying some- 

 thing about a sewing circle, he answered, 

 quite seriously, " No, it is rather like a gen- 

 tleman's club." But it would have been 

 unscientific, as well as unchristian, to enter- 

 tain an hypothesis like this without putting 

 its soundness to some kind of test. I 

 adopted the only plan that occurred to me, 

 short of rising at half past two o'clock in 

 the morning to see the birds disperse. I 

 entered the wood just before the assemblage 

 was due (this was on the 9th of July), and 

 took a sheltered position on the eastern edge, 

 where, as the robins flew by me, or alighted 

 temporarily in the trees just across the brook, 

 they would have the sunlight upon their 

 breasts. Here, as often as one came suffi- 

 ciently near and in a sufficiently favorable 

 light, I noted whether it was an adult, or a 

 streaked, spotted bird of the present season. 

 As a matter of course, the number concern- 

 ing which this point could be positively de- 

 termined under such conditions was very 



