230 THE REDBREAST. 



person being able to ascertain from whence they came. Pro- 

 bably disappointed by perceiving that they were swept away as 

 soon as deposited, the domestic bird resolved to try another 

 equally sheltered situation, and, accordingly, selected the dining- 

 room, which, as the family never entered it till luncheon-time, 

 she had all to herself from the moment the housemaid had done 

 her duty in the morning and retired, leaving, as she was accus- 

 tomed to do, the window open. How long the bird had carried 

 on her operations unnoticed we know not, but a servant acci- 

 dentally moving the drapery of one of the window-curtains, 

 discovered in the folds of a festoon the Robin's nest. 



In this instance the bird availed itself of a situation in which, 

 during the greater portion of the day she was 

 in solitude and silence ; but solitude and 

 silence do not seem essential to all Robins, 

 for we lately heard of a pair which took pos- 

 session of a pigeon-hole book-shelf in a school 

 which was constantly frequented by seventy 

 children. The hole selected was at the 

 farthest extremity of the room, immediately 

 above the heads of a junior class of little 

 girls from four to five years of age, who, much to their credit, 

 never disturbed the bird. There she laid and hatched five eggs. 

 One of the young ones died in a few days, and the body was 

 carried off by the parent birds. The remaining four we're regu- 

 larly fed in the presence of the children, and in due time reared. 

 Soon after their departure the old bird repaired the nest, and 

 laid three more eggs, which she attended to with the same per- 

 severance and success. We have often alluded to the frequent 

 return of birds to the same nests, and perhaps the most singular 

 feature in this anecdote is, that some years before a Robin 

 built in that identical pigeon-hole. Why the visits were not 

 renewed every year it is impossible to conjecture, but that the 

 later pair were either the same old birds, or young ones of 

 the brood then reared in it, is more than probable from the 

 circumstance of this pigeon-hole being again selected, when 

 others, forming the school-library within the same framework, 

 would have equally suited the purpose. 



