T. THE ROBIN, I9 



known favourite, and to think about him with some 

 precision. 



16. And first, Where does he come from ? I 

 stated that my lectures were to be on English and 

 Greek birds ; but we are apt to fancy the robin 

 all our own. How exclusively, do you suppose, he 

 really^ belongs to us ? You would think this was 

 the .first point to be settled in any book about 

 him.' I have hunted all my books through, and 

 can't tell you how much he is our own, or how far 

 he is a traveller. 



And, indeed, are not all our ideas obscure about 

 migration itself ? You are broadly told that a bird 

 travels, and how wonderful it is that it finds its way ; 

 but you are scarcely ever told, or led to think, what 

 it really travels for — whether for food, for warmth, 

 or for seclusion — and how the travelling is connected 

 with its fixed home. Birds have not their town and 

 country houses, — their villas in Italy, and shooting 

 boxes in Scotland. The country in which they build 

 their nests is their proper home, — the country, that 

 is to say, in which they pass the spring and summer. 

 Then they go south in the winter, for food and 

 warmth ; but in what lines, and by what stages .'' 

 The general definition of a migrant in this 

 hemisphere is a bird that goes north to build its 

 nest, and south for the winter ; but, then, the one 



2 A 



