170 ROBIN ROOSTS. 



small, only fifty-seven altogether. Of 

 these, forty-nine were surely birds of the 

 present summer, and only eight unmistak- 

 able adult males. If any adult females 

 came in, they passed among the unidentified 

 and uncounted. 1 I was glad I had made the 

 test. As a kind-hearted cynic (I confess to 

 being nothing worse than this), I was re- 

 lieved to find my misanthropic, or, to speak 

 more exactly, my misornithic, notions ill 

 founded. As for the sprinkling of adult 

 males, they may have been, as a "friend and 

 fellow woodlander" suggests, birds which, 

 for one reason or another, had taken up 

 with the detestable opinion that "marriage 

 is a failure." 



During the month of July, 1890, I made 

 frequent counts of the entries at the eastern 

 end of the roost, thinking thus to ascertain 

 in a general way the rate at which its popu- 

 lation increased. On the whole, the growth 

 proved to be fairly steady, in spite of some 

 mysterious fluctuations, as will be seen by 

 the following table : 



1 A week later, my correspondent reported a similar 

 state of things at the Belmont roost. "A very large 

 proportion of the birds are spotted-breasted young of the 



